Is-! 


SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 


THE    MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON   •   CHICAGO   •   DALLAS 
ATLANTA    •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON   •    BOMBAY    •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OF  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


SPIRITUAL   ENERGIES 
IN  DAILY  LIFE 


BY 

RUFUS  M.  JONES,  Litt.D.,  D.D, 

Professor  of  Philosophy  in  Haverford  College 

Author  of   Studies  in  Mystical  Religion;   The  Inner  Life; 

The  World  Within,  etc. 


Iftew  I>orfe 
THE  MACMILLAN   COMPANY 

1922 

All  rights  reserved 


Tg 


Copyright,  1922, 
By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  eleetrotyped.    Published  September,  1922 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


PREFACE 

I  wish  to  thank  the  editor  of  The  Atlantic 
Monthly  for  his  permission  to  print  in  this  volume 
the  chapter  entitled  "  The  Mystic's  Experience 
of  God,"  also  the  editors  of  The  Journal  of  Re- 
ligion for  their  permission  to  use  the  article  on 
11  Psychology  and  the  Spiritual  Life."  Some  of 
the  shorter  essays  have  been  printed  in  The 
(London)  Friend  and  in  The  Homiletic  Review. 
Kind  permission  has  been  granted  for  their  re- 
production. 


498377 


INTRODUCTION 
RELIGION  AS  ENERGY 

Religion  is  an  experience  which  no  definition 
exhausts.  One  writer  with  expert  knowledge  of 
anthropology  tells  us  what  it  is,  and  we  know  as 
we  read  his  account  that,  however  true  it  may  be 
as  far  as  it  goes,  it  yet  leaves  untouched  much 
undiscovered  territory.  We  turn  next  to  the 
trained  psychologist,  who  leads  us  "  down  the 
labyrinthine  ways  of  our  own  mind  "  and  tells  us 
why  the  human  race  has  always  been  seeking  God 
and  worshiping  Him.  We  are  thankful  for  his 
Ariadne  thread  which  guides  us  within  the  maze, 
but  we  feel  convinced  that  there  are  doors  which 
he  has  not  opened  —  "  doors  to  which  he  had  no 
key."  The  theologian,  with  great  assurance  and 
without  "  ifs  and  buts,"  offers  us  the  answer  to  all 
mysteries  and  the  solution  of  all  problems,  but 
when  we  have  gone  "  up  the  hill  all  the  way  to 
the  very  top  "  with  him,  we  find  it  a  "  homesick 
peak  " —  Heimwehfluh  —  and  we  still  wonder 
over  the  real  meaning  of  religion. 

We  are  evidently  dealing  here  with  something 

vii 


viii  INTRODUCTION 

like  that  drinking  horn  which  the  Norse  God  Thor 
tried  to  drain.  He  failed  to  do  it  because  the 
horn  which  he  assayed  to  empty  debouched  into 
the  endless  ocean,  and  therefore  to  drain  the  horn 
meant  drinking  the  ocean  dry.  To  probe  religion 
down  to  the  bottom  means  knowing  "  what  God 
and  man  is."  Each  one  of  us,  in  his  own  tongue 
and  in  terms  of  his  own  field  of  knowledge,  gives 
his  partial  word,  his  tiny  glimpse  of  insight.  But 
the  returns  are  never  all  in.  There  is  always 
more  to  say.  "  Man  is  incurably  religious,"  that 
fine  scholar,  Auguste  Sabatier,  said.  Yes,  he  is. 
It  is  often  wild  and  erratic  religion  which  we  find, 
no  doubt,  but  the  hunger  and  thirst  of  the  human 
soul  are  an  indubitable  fact.  In  different  forms 
of  speech  we  can  all  say  with  St.  Augustine  of 
Hippo:  "  Thou  hast  touched  me  and  I  am  on 
fire  for  thy  peace." 

In  saying  that  religion  is  energy  I  am  only 
seizing  one  aspect  of  this  great  experience  of  the 
human  heart.  It  is,  however,  I  believe,  an  essen- 
tial aspect.  A  religion  that  makes  no  difference 
to  a  person's  life,  a  religion  that  does  nothing,  a 
religion  that  is  utterly  devoid  of  power,  may  for 
all  practical  purposes  be  treated  as  though  it  did 
not  exist.  The  great  experts  —  those  who  know 
from  the  inside  what  religion  is  —  always  make 


INTRODUCTION  ix 

much  of  its  dynamic  power,  its  energizing  and  pro- 
pulsive power.  Power  is  a  word  often  on  the  lips 
of  Jesus;  never  used,  it  should  be  said,  in  the  sense 
of  extrinsic  authority  or  the  right  to  command 
and  govern,  but  always  in  reference  to  an  intrinsic 
and  interior  moral  and  spiritual  energy  of  life. 
The  kingdom  of  God  comes  with  power,  not  be- 
cause the  Messiah  is  supplied  with  ten  legions 
of  angels  and  can  sweep  the  Roman  eagles  back 
to  the  frontiers  of  the  Holy  Land,  but  it  "  comes 
with  power  "  because  it  is  a  divine  and  life-trans- 
forming energy,  working  in  the  moral  and  spirit- 
ual nature  of  man,  as  the  expanding  yeast  works 
in  the  flour  or  as  the  forces  of  life  push  the  seed 
into  germination  and  on  into  the  successive  stages 
toward  the  maturity  of  the  full-grown  plant  and 
grain. 

The  little  fellowship  of  followers  and  witnesses 
who  formed  the  nucleus  of  the  new-born  Church 
felt  themselves  "  endued  with  power  "  on  the  day 
of  Pentecost.  Something  new  and  dynamic  en- 
tered the  consciousness  of  the  feeble  band  and 
left  them  no  longer  feeble.  There  was  an  in- 
rushing,  up-welling  sense  of  invasion.  They 
passed  over  from  a  visible  Leader  and  Master  to 
an  invisible  and  inward  Presence  revealed  to 
them  as  an  unwonted  energy.     Ecstatic  utterance, 


x  INTRODUCTION 

which  seems  to  have  followed,  is  not  the  all-im- 
portant thing.  The  important  thing  is  height- 
ened moral  quality,  intensified  fellowship,  a  fused 
and  undying  loyalty,  an  irresistible  boldness  in 
the  face  of  danger  and  opposition,  a  fortification 
of  spirit  which  nothing  could  break.  This  energy 
which  came  with  their  experience  is  what  marks 
the  event  as  an  epoch. 

St.  Paul  writes  as  though  he  were  an  expert  in 
dynamics.  "  Dynamos,"  the  Greek  word  for 
power,  is  one  of  his  favorite  words.  He  seems  to 
have  found  out  how  to  draw  upon  energies  in  the 
universe  which  nobody  else  had  suspected  were 
even  there.  It  is  a  fundamental  feature  of  his 
"Aegean  gospel"  that  God  is  not  self-contained  but 
self -giving,  that  He  circulates,  as  does  the  sun,  as 
does  the  sea,  and  comes  into  us  as  an  energy.  This 
incoming  energy  he  calls  by  many  names:  "  The 
Spirit,"  "  holy  Spirit,"  "  Christ,"  "  the  Spirit  of 
Christ,"  "  Christ  in  you,"  "  God  that  worketh  in 
us."  Whatever  his  word  or  term  is,  he  is  always 
declaring,  and  he  bases  his  testimony  on  experi- 
ence, that  God,  as  Christ  reveals  Him,  is  an  active 
energy  working  with  us  and  in  us  for  the  complete 
transformation  of  our  fundamental  nature  and 
for  a  new  creation  in  us. 

All  this  perhaps  sounds  too  grand  and  lofty, 


INTRODUCTION  xi 

too  remote  and  far  away,  to  touch  us  with  reality. 
We  assume  that  it  is  for  saints  or  apostles,  but 
not  for  common  every-day  people  like  ourselves. 
Well,  that  is  where  we  are  wrong.     The  accounts 
which  St.  Paul  gives  of  the  energies  of  religion 
are  not  for  his  own  sake,  or  for  persons  who  are 
bien  ne  and  naturally  saintly.     They  are  for  the 
rank  and  file  of  humans.     In  fact  his  Corinthian 
fellowship  was  raised  by  these  energies  out  of 
the  lowest  stratum  of  society.     The  words  which 
he  uses  to  describe  them  are  probably  not  over 
strong:  "  Be   not   deceived:   neither    fornicators, 
nor  idolaters,  nor  adulterers,  nor  effeminate,  nor 
abusers  of  themselves  with  mankind,  nor  thieves, 
nor  covetous,  nor  drunkards,  nor  revilers,  nor  ex- 
tortioners shall  inherit  the  kingdom  of  God.    And 
such  were  some  of  you:  but  ye  are  washed,  but 
ye  are  sanctified,  but  ye  are  justified  in  the  name 
[i.e.  the  power]   of  the  Lord  Jesus  and  by  the 
Spirit  of  our  God."  * 

It  is  to  be  noticed,  further,  that  St.  Paul  does 
not  confine  his  list  of  energies  to  those  mighty 
spiritual  forces  which  come  down  from  above 
and  work  upon  us  from  the  outside.  Much  more 
often  our  attention  is  directed  to  energies  which 
are  potential  within  ourselves  —  even  in  the  most 

1 1  Cor.  VI.  9-". 


xii  INTRODUCTION 

ordinary  of  us  —  energies  which  work  as  silently 
as  molecular  forces  or  as  "  the  capillary  oozing 
of  water,"  but  which  nevertheless  are  as  recon- 
structive as  the  forces  of  springtime,  following 
the  winter's  havoc.  If  the  grace  of  God  —  the 
unlimited  sacrificing  love  of  God  revealed  in 
Christ  —  is  for  St.  Paul  the  supreme  spiritual 
energy  of  the  universe,  hardly  less  important  is 
the  simple  human  energy  which  meets  that  centri- 
fugal energy  and  makes  it  operate  within  the 
sphere  of  the  moral  will.  That  dynamic  energy, 
by  which  the  man  responds  to  God's  upward  pull 
and  which  makes  all  the  difference,  St.  Paul  calls 
faith. 

We  are  so  accustomed  to  the  use  of  the  word 
in  a  spurious  sense  that  we  are  slow  to  apprehend 
the  immense  significance  of  this  human  energy 
which  lies  potentially  within  us.  Unfortunately 
trained  young  folks  and  scientifically  minded  peo- 
ple are  apt  to  shy  away  from  the  word  and  put 
themselves  on  the  defensive,  as  though  they  were 
about  to  be  asked  to  believe  the  impossible  or  the 
dubious  or  the  unprovable.  Faith  in  the  sense 
in  which  St.  Paul  uses  it  does  not  mean  believing 
something.  It  is  a  moral  attitude  and  response 
of  will  to  the  character  of  God  as  He  has  been 
revealed  in  Christ.     It  is  like  the  act  which  closes 


INTRODUCTION  xiii 

the  electric  circuit,  which  act  at  once  releases 
power.  The  dynamic  effect  which  follows  the 
act  is  the  best  possible  verification  of  the  ration- 
ality of  the  act.  So,  too,  faith  as  a  moral  re- 
sponse is  no  blind  leap,  no  wild  venture;  it  is  an 
act  which  can  be  tested  and  verified  by  moral  and 
spiritual  effects,  which  are  as  real  as  the  heat, 
light,  and  horse  power  of  the  dynamo. 

Faith  has  come  to  be  recognized  as  an  energy 
in  many  spheres  of  life.  We  know  what  a  sta- 
bilizer it  is  in  the  sphere  of  finance.  Stocks  and 
bonds  and  banks  shift  their  values  as  faith  in 
them  rises  or  falls.  Morale  is  only  another  name 
for  faith.  Our  human  relationships,  our  social 
structures,  our  enjoyment  of  one  another,  our  sat- 
isfaction in  books  and  in  lectures  rest  upon  faith 
and  when  that  energy  fails,  collapses  of  the  most 
serious  sort  follow.  We  might  as  well  try  to 
build  a  world  without  cohesion  as  to  maintain 
society  without  the  energy  of  faith. 

We  have  many  illustrations  of  the  important 
part  which  faith  plays  in  the  sphere  of  physical 
health.  The  corpuscles  of  the  blood  and  the 
molecules  of  the  body  are  altered  by  it.  The 
tension  of  the  arteries  and  the  efficiency  of  the 
digestive  tract  are  affected  by  it.  Nerves  are  in 
close  sympathetic  rapport  with  faith.     It  is  never 


xiv  INTRODUCTION 

safe  to  tell  a  strong  man  that  he  is  pale  and  that 
he  looks  ill.  If  two  or  three  persons  in  succes- 
sion give  him  a  pessimistic  account  of  his  appear- 
ance, he  will  soon  begin  to  have  the  condition 
which  has  been  imagined.  Dr.  William  McDou- 
gall  gives  the  case  of  a  boy  who  was  being  chased 
by  a  furious  animal  and  under  the  impulse  of  the 
emergency  he  leaped  a  fence  which  he  could  never 
afterwards  jump,  even  after  long  athletic  train- 
ing. The  list  of  similar  instances  is  a  very  long 
one.  Every  reader  knows  a  case  as  impressive 
as  the  one  I  have  given.  The  varieties  of  "  shell- 
shock  "  have  furnished  volumes  of  illustrations 
of  the  energy  of  faith,  its  dynamic  influence  upon 
health  and  life  and  efficiency. 

Faith  in  the  sphere  of  religion  works  the  great- 
est miracles  of  life  that  are  ever  worked.  It 
makes  the  saint  out  of  Magdalene,  the  heroic  mis- 
sionary and  martyr  out  of  Paul,  the  spiritual 
statesman  of  the  ages  out  of  Carthaginian 
Augustine,  the  illuminated  leader  of  men  out  of 
Francis  of  Assisi,  the  maker  of  a  new  world  epoch 
out  of  the  nervously  unstable  monk  Luther,  the 
creator  of  a  new  type  of  spiritual  society  out  of 
the  untaught  Leicestershire  weaver,  George  Fox. 
Why  do  we  not  all  experience  the  miracle  and 
find  the  rest  of  ourselves  through  faith?     The 


INTRODUCTION  xv 

main  trouble  is  that  we  live  victims  of  limiting 
inhibitions.  We  hold  intellectual  theories  which 
keep  back  or  check  the  outflow  of  the  energy  of 
faith.  We  have  a  nice  system  of  thought  which 
accounts  for  everything  and  explains  everything 
and  which  leaves  no  place  for  faith.  We  know 
too  much.  We  say  to  ourselves  that  only  the 
ignorant  and  uncultured  are  led  by  faith.  And 
this  same  wise  man,  who  is  too  proud  to  have 
faith,  holds  all  his  inhibitory  theories  on  a  basis 
of  faith!  Every  one  of  them  starts  out  on  faith, 
gathers  standing  ground  by  faith,  and  becomes  a 
controlling  force  through  faith ! 

There  are  many  other  spiritual  energies,  some 
of  which  will  be  dealt  with  specifically  or  implic- 
itly in  the  later  chapters  of  this  book.  Not  often 
in  the  history  of  the  modern  world  certainly  have 
spiritual  energies  seemed  more  urgently  needed 
than  to-day.  Our  troubles  consist  largely  now 
of  failure  to  lay  hold  of  moral  and  spiritual  forces 
that  lie  near  at  hand  and  to  utilize  powers  that 
are  within  our  easy  reach.  Our  stock  of  faith 
and  hope  and  love  has  run  low  and  we  realize 
only  feebly  what  mighty  energies  they  can  be. 

I  hope  that  these  short  essays  may  help  in  some 
slight  way  to  indicate  that  the  ancient  realities 
by  which  men  live  still  abide,  and  that  the  invisi- 


xvi  INTRODUCTION 

ble  energies  of  the  spirit  are  real,  as  they  have 
always  been  real.  We  have  had  an  impressive 
demonstration  that  a  civilization  built  on  external 
force  and  measured  in  terms  of  economic  achieve- 
ments cannot  stand  its  ground  and  is  unable 
to  speak  to  the  condition  of  persons  endowed  and 
equipped  as  we  are.  We  are  bound  to  build  a 
higher  civilization,  to  create  a  greater  culture,  and 
to  form  a  truer  kingdom  of  life  or  we  must  write 
"  Mene"  on  all  human  undertakings.  That  is 
our  task  now,  and  it  is  a  serious  one  for  which 
we  shall  need  all  the  energies  that  the  universe 
puts  at  our  disposal.  I  am  told  that  when  the 
great  Hellgate  bridge  was  being  built  over  the 
East  River  in  New  York  the  engineers  came  upon 
an  old  derelict  ship,  lying  embedded  in  the  river 
mud,  just  where  one  of  the  central  piers  of  the 
bridge  was  to  go  down  through  to  its  bedrock 
foundation.  No  tug  boat  could  be  found  that 
was  able  to  start  the  derelict  from  its  ancient  bed 
in  the  ooze.  It  would  not  move,  no  matter  what 
force  was  applied.  Finally,  with  a  sudden  in- 
spiration one  of  the  workers  hit  upon  this  scheme. 
He  took  a  large  flat-boat,  which  had  been  used  to 
bring  stone  down  the  river,  and  he  chained  it  to 
the  old  sunken  ship  when  the  tide  was  low.  Then 
he  waited  for  the  great  tidal  energies  to  do  their 


INTRODUCTION  xvii 

work.  Slowly  the  rising  tide,  with  all  the  forces 
of  the  ocean  behind  it  and  the  moon  above  it, 
came  up  under  the  flat-boat,  raising  it  inch  by 
inch.  And  as  it  came  up,  lifted  by  irresistible 
power,  the  derelict  came  up  with  it,  until  it  was 
entirely  out  of  the  mud  that  had  held  it.  Then 
the  boat,  with  its  subterranean  load,  was  towed 
out  to  sea  where  the  old  waterlogged  ship  was 
unchained  and  allowed  to  drop  forever  out  of 
sight  and  reach. 

There  are  greater  forces  than  those  tidal  ener- 
gies waiting  for  us  to  use  for  our  tasks.  They 
have  always  been  there.  They  are  there  now. 
But  they  do  not  work,  they  do  not  operate,  until 
we  lay  hold  of  them  and  use  them  for  our  present 
purposes.     We  must  be  co-workers  with  God. 

Haverford,  Pennsylvania. 
Mid  Winter,  1922. 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Introduction:  Religion  as  Energy         .       vii 
CHAPTER  I 

THE    CENTRAL    PEACE 

I.    Peace  That  Passes  Understanding        .         i 

II.   The  Search  for  a  Refuge        ...         5 

III.   What  We  Want  Most      .       .       .        .       io 

CHAPTER  II 

THE   GREAT    ENERGIES   THAT   WORK 

I.  Trying  the  Better  Way    .       .       .       .       15 

II.  He  Came  to  Himself 23 

III.    Some   New   Reasons   for   "Loving   Ene- 
mies"      29 

CHAPTER  III 
the  power  that  worketh  in  us 
I.   Where  the  Beyond  Breaks  Through    .       35 
II.    Conquering  by  an  Inner  Force      .        .       41 
III.    Living  in  the  Presence  of  the  Eternal       46 

CHAPTER  IV 
THE  way  of  vision 
I.    Days  of  Greater  Visibility       ...       50 

II.  The  Prophet  and  His  Tragedies    .       .       54 

III.  A  Long  Distance  Call      ....       60 

six 


xx  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  V 

THE   WAY   OF    PERSONALITY 

PAGE 

I.   Another  Kind  of  Hero      ....       65 

II.   The  Better  Possession        ....       69 

III.    The  Greatest  Rivalries  of  Life     .       .       74 

CHAPTER  VI 

AGENCIES   OF    CONSTRUCTION 

I.  The  Church  of  the  Living  God     .       .       79 

II.  The  Nursery  of  Spiritual  Life      .       .       83 

III.  The  Democracy  We  Aim  At    .       .        .86 

IV.  The  Essential  Truth  of  Christianity        91 

CHAPTER  VII 

THE    NEAR   AND   THE    FAR 

I.  Things  Present  and  Things  to  Come  .       98 

II.  Two  Types  of  Ministry     .       .       .        .102 

III.  We  Have  Seen  His  Star    ....     106 

CHAPTER  VIII 

THE   LIGHT-FRINGED   MYSTERY 

I.   The   Religious   Significance   of   Death     hi 

II.  The  New  Born  out  of  the  Old    .       .     127 

CHAPTER  IX 

the  mystic's  experience  of  god       .     133 

CHAPTER  X 
psychology  and  the  spiritual  life    .     160 


SPIRITUAL   ENERGIES   IN 
DAILY  LIFE 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  CENTRAL  PEACE 

I 

PEACE  THAT  PASSES  UNDERSTANDING 

We  are  all  familiar  with  the  coming  of  a  peace 
into  our  life  at  the  terminus  of  some  great  strain 
or  after  we  have  weathered  a  staggering  crisis. 
When  a  long-continued  pain  which  has  racked  our 
nerves  passes  away  and  leaves  us  free,  we  sud- 
denly come  into  a  zone  of  peace.  When  we  have 
been  watching  by  a  bedside  where  a  life,  unspeak- 
ably precious  to  us,  has  lain  in  the  grip  of  some 
terrible  disease  and  at  length  successfully  passes 
the  crisis,  we  walk  out  into  the  fields  under  the 
altered  sky  and  feel  a  peace  settle  down  upon  us, 
which  makes  the  whole  world  look  different.  Or, 
again,  we  have  been  facing  some  threatening 
catastrophe  which  seemed  likely  to  break  in  on 


2     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

our  life  and  perhaps  end  forever  the  calm  and 
even  tenor  of  it,  and  just  when  the  hour  of  dan- 
ger seemed  darkest  and  our  fear  was  at  its  height, 
some  sudden  turn  of  things  has  brought  a  happy 
shift  of  events,  the  danger  has  passed,  and  a  great 
peace  has  come  over  us  instead  of  the  threatened 
trouble.  In  all  these  cases  the  peace  which  suc- 
ceeds pain  and  strain  and  anxiety  is  a  thoroughly 
natural,  reasonable  peace,  a  peace  which  comes 
in  normal  sequence  and  is  quite  accessible  to  the 
understanding.  We  should  be  surprised  and 
should  need  an  explanation  if  we  heard  of  an  in- 
stance of  a  passing  pain  or  a  yielding  strain  that 
was  not  followed  by  a  corresponding  sense  of 
peace.  One  who  has  seen  a  child  that  was  lost 
in  a  crowded  city  suddenly  find  his  mother  and 
find  safety  in  her  dear  arms  has  seen  a  good  case 
of  this  sequential  peace,  this  peace  which  the 
understanding  can  grasp  and  comprehend.  We 
behold  it  and  say,  "How  otherwise!" 

There  is,  St.  Paul  reminds  us,  another  kind  of 
peace  of  quite  a  different  order.  It  baffles  the 
understanding  and  transcends  its  categories.  It 
is  a  peace  which  comes,  not  after  the  pain  is  re- 
lieved, not  after  the  crisis  has  passed,  not  after 
the  danger  has  disappeared;  but  in  the  midst  of 
the  pain,  while  the  crisis  is  still  on,  and  even  in 


THE  CENTRAL  PEACE  3 

the  imminent  presence  of  the  danger.  It  is  a 
peace  that  is  not  banished  or  destroyed  by  the 
frustrations  which  beset  our  lives;  rather  it  is  in 
and  through  the  frustrations  that  we  first  come 
upon  it  and  enter  into  it,  as,  to  use  St.  Paul's 
phrase,  into  a  garrison  which  guards  our  hearts 
and  minds. 

Each  tested  soul  has  to  meet  its  own  peculiar 
frustrations.  All  of  us  who  work  for  "  causes  " 
or  who  take  up  any  great  piece  of  moral  or  spir- 
itual service  in  the  world  know  more  about  de- 
feats and  disappointments  than  we  do  about 
success  and  triumphs.  We  have  to  learn  to  be 
patient  and  long-suffering.  We  must  become 
accustomed  to  postponements  and  delays,  and 
sometimes  we  see  the  work  of  almost  a  lifetime 
suddenly  fail  of  its  end.  Some  turn  of  events 
upsets  all  our  noble  plans  and  frustrates  the  re- 
sult, just  when  it  appeared  ready  to  arrive. 
Death  falls  like  lightning  on  a  home  that  had 
always  before  seemed  sheltered  and  protected, 
and  instantly  life  is  profoundly  altered  for  those 
who  are  left  behind.  Nothing  can  make  up  for 
the  loss.  There  is  no  substitute  for  what  is  gone. 
The  accounts  will  not  balance;  frustration  in  an- 
other form  confronts  us.  Or  it  may  be  a  break- 
down of  physical  or  mental  powers,   or  perad- 


4     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

venture  both  together,  just  when  the  emergencies 
of  the  world  called  for  added  energy  and  in- 
creased range  of  power  from  us.  The  need  is 
plain,  the  harvest  is  ripe,  but  the  worker's  hand 
fails  and  he  must  contract  when  he  would  most 
expand.  Frustration  looks  him  straight  in  the 
face.  Well,  to  achieve  a  peace  under  those 
circumstances  is  to  have  a  peace  which  does  not 
follow  a  normal  sequence.  It  is  not  what  the 
world  expects.  It  does  not  accord  with  the  ways 
of  thought  and  reasoning.  It  passes  all  under- 
standing. It  brings  another  kind  of  world  into 
operation  and  reveals  a  play  of  invisible  forces 
upon  which  the  understanding  had  not  reckoned. 
In  fact,  this  strange  intellect-transcending  peace, 
in  the  very  midst  of  storm  and  strain  and  trial,  is 
one  of  the  surest  evidences  there  is  of  God.  One 
may  in  his  own  humble  nerve-power  succeed  in 
acquiring  a  stoic  resignation  so  that  he  can  say, 

"  In  the  fell  clutch  of  circumstance 

I  have  not  winced  nor  cried  aloud. 
Under  the  bludgeonings  of  chance 
My  head  is  bloody,  but  unbowed." 

He  may,  by  sheer  force  of  will,  keep  down  the 
lid  upon  his  emotions  and  go  on  so  nearly  un- 
moved that  his  fellows  can  hear  no  groan  and 


THE  CENTRAL  PEACE  5 

will  wonder  at  the  way  he  stands  the  universe. 
But  peace  in  the  soul  is  another  matter.  To  have 
the  whole  heart  and  mind  garrisoned  with  peace 
even  in  Nero's  dungeon,  when  the  imperial  death 
sentence  brings  frustration  to  all  plans  and  a 
terminus  to  all  spiritual  work,  calls  for  some 
world-transcending  assistance  to  the  human  spirit. 
Such  peace  is  explained  only  when  we  discover 
that  it  is  "  the  peace  of  God,"  and  that  it  came 
because  the  soul  broke  through  the  ebbings  and 
flowings  of  time  and  space  and  allied  itself  with 
the  Eternal. 


II 

THE    SEARCH    FOR   A   REFUGE 

Few  things  are  more  impressive  than  the  per- 
sistent search  which  men  have  made  in  all  ages 
for  a  refuge  against  the  dangers  and  the  ills  that 
beset  life.  The  cave-men,  the  cliff-dwellers,  the 
primitive  builders  of  shelters  in  inaccessible  tree 
tops,  are  early  examples  of  the  search  for  human 
defenses  against  fear.  Civilization  slowly  per- 
fected methods  of  refuge  and  defense  of  elaborate 
types,  which,  in  turn,  had  to  compete  with 
ever-increasing  ingenuity  of  attack  and  assault. 


6     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

But  I  am  not  concerned  here  with  these  material 
strongholds  of  refuge  and  defense.  I  am  think- 
ing rather  of  the  human  search  for  shelter  against 
other  weapons  than  those  which  kill  the  body. 
We  are  all  trying,  in  one  way  or  another,  to  dis- 
cover how  to  escape  from  "  the  heavy  and  weary 
weight  of  all  this  unintelligible  world,"  how  to 
bear  the  slings  and  arrows  of  outrageous  fortune. 
We  are  sensitively  constructed,  with  nerves  ex- 
posed to  easy  attack.  We  are  all  shelterless  at 
some  point  to  the  storms  of  the  world.  Even 
the  most  perfectly  equipped  and  impervious 
heroes  prove  to  be  vulnerable  at  some  one  un- 
covered spot.  Sooner  or  later  our  protections 
fail,  and  the  pitiless  enemies  of  our  happiness  get 
through  the  defenses  and  reach  the  quick  and 
sensitive  soul  within  us.  How  to  rebuild  our 
refuge,  how  to  find  real  shelter,  is  our  problem. 
What  fortress  is  there  in  which  the  soul  is  safe 
from  fear  and  trouble? 

The  most  common  expedient  is  one  which  will 
drug  the  sensitive  nerves  and  produce  an  easy 
relief  from  strain  and  worry.  There  is  a  magic 
in  alcohol  and  kindred  distillations,  which,  like 
Aladdin's  genie,  builds  a  palace  of  joy  and,  for 
the  moment,  banishes  the  enemy  of  all  peace. 
The  refuge  seems  complete.     All  fear  is  gone. 


THE  CENTRAL  PEACE  7 

worry  is  a  thing  of  the  past.  The  jargon  of  life 
is  over,  the  pitiless  problem  of  good  and  evil 
drops  out  of  consciousness.  The  shelterless  soul 
seems  covered  and  housed.  Intoxication  is  only 
one  of  the  many  quick  expedients.  It  is  always 
possible  to  retreat  from  the  edge  of  strenuous 
battle  into  some  one  of  the  many  natural  instincts 
as  a  way  of  refuge.  The  great  instinctive  emo- 
tions are  absorbing,  and  tend  to  obliterate  every- 
thing else.  They  occupy  the  entire  stage  of  the 
inner  drama,  and  push  all  other  actors  away  from 
the  footlights  of  consciousness,  so  that  here,  too, 
the  enemies  of  peace  and  joy  seem  vanquished, 
and  the  refuge  appears  to  be  found. 

That  multitudes  accept  these  easy  ways  of  de- 
fense against  the  ills  of  life  is  only  too  obvious. 
The  medieval  barons  who  could  build  themselves 
castles  of  safety  were  few  in  number.  Visible 
refuges  in  any  case  are  rare  and  scarce,  but  the 
escape  from  the  burdens  and  defeats  of  the  world 
in  drink  and  drug  and  thrilling  instinctive  emo- 
tion is,  without  much  difficulty,  open  to  every  man 
and  within  easy  reach  for  rich  and  poor  alike,  and 
many  there  be  that  seize  upon  this  method.  The 
trouble  with  it  is  that  it  is  a  very  temporary 
refuge.  It  works,  if  at  all,  only  for  a  brief  span. 
It  plays  havoc  in  the  future  with  those  who  resort 


8     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

to  it.  It  rolls  up  new  liabilities  to  the  ills  one 
would  escape.  It  involves  far  too  great  a  price 
for  the  tiny  respite  gained.  And,  most  of  all,  it 
discounts  or  fails  to  reckon  with  the  inherent 
greatness  of  the  human  soul.  We  are  fashioned 
for  stupendous  issues.  Our  very  sense  of  failure 
and  defeat  comes  from  a  touch  of  the  infinite  in 
our  being.  We  look  before  and  after,  and  sigh 
for  that  which  is  not,  just  because  we  can  not  be 
contented  with  finite  fragments  of  time  and  space. 
We  are  meant  for  greater  things  than  these 
trivial  ones  which  so  often  get  our  attention  and 
absorb  us;  but  the  moment  the  soul  comes  to  it- 
self, its  reach  goes  beyond  the  grasp,  and  it  feels 
an  indescribable  discontent  and  longing  for  that 
for  which  it  was  made.  To  seek  refuge,  there- 
fore, in  some  narcotic  joy,  to  still  the  onward 
yearning  of  the  soul  by  drowning  consciousness, 
to  banish  the  pain  of  pursuit  by  a  barbaric  surge 
of  emotions,  is  to  strike  against  the  noblest  trait 
of  our  spiritual  structure;  it  means  committing 
suicide  of  the  soul.  It  cannot  be  a  real  man's 
way  of  relief. 

In  fact,  nothing  short  of  finding  the  goal  and 
object  for  which  the  soul,  the  spiritual  nature  in 
us,  is  fitted  will  ever  do  for  beings  like  us.  St. 
Augustine,  in  words  of  immortal  beauty,  has  said 


THE  CENTRAL  PEACE  9 

that  God  has  made  us  for  himself,  and  our  hearts 
are  restless  until  we  rest  in  him.  It  is  not  a  the- 
ory of  poet  or  theologian.  It  is  a  simple  fact  of 
life,  as  veritable  as  the  human  necessity  for  food. 
There  is  no  other  shelter  for  the  soul,  no  other 
refuge  or  fortress  will  ever  do  for  us  but  God. 
"  We  tremble  and  we  burn.  We  tremble,  know- 
ing that  we  are  unlike  him.  We  burn,  feeling 
that  we  are  like  him." 

In  hours  of  loss  and  sorrow,  when  the  spurious 
props  fail  us,  we  are  more  apt  to  find  our  way 
back  to  the  real  refuge.  We  are  suddenly  made 
aware  of  our  shelterless  condition,  alone,  and  in 
our  own  strength.  Our  stoic  armor  and  our 
brave  defenses  of  pride  become  utterly  inade- 
quate. We  are  thrown  back  on  reality.  We 
have  then  our  moments  of  sincerity  and  insight. 
We  feel  that  we  cannot  live  without  resources 
from  beyond  our  own  domain.  We  must  have 
God.  It  is  then,  when  one  knows  that  nothing 
else  whatever  will  do,  that  the  great  discovery  is 
made.  Again  and  again  the  psalms  announce 
this.  When  the  world  has  caved  in;  when  the 
last  extremity  has  been  reached;  when  the  billows 
and  waterspouts  of  fortune  have  done  their 
worst,  you  hear  the  calm,  heroic  voice  of  the 
lonely  man  saying:  "  God  is  our  refuge  and  fort- 


io    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

ress,  therefore  will  not  we  fear  though  the  earth 
be  removed,  though  the  mountains  be  carried 
into  the  midst  of  the  sea."  That  is  great  expe- 
rience, but  it  is  not  reserved  for  psalmists  and 
rare  patriarchs  like  Job.  It  is  a  privilege  for 
common  mortals  like  us  who  struggle  and  agonize 
and  feel  the  thorn  in  the  flesh,  and  the  bitter 
tragedy  of  life  unhealed.  Whether  we  make  the 
discovery  or  not,  God  is  there  with  us  in  the  fur- 
nace. Only  it  makes  all  the  difference  if  we  do 
find  him  as  the  one  high  tower  where  refuge  is 
not  for  the  passing  moment  only,  but  is  an  eternal 
attainment. 


Ill 

WHAT  WE  WANT  MOST 

There  are  many  things  which  we  want— * 
things  for  which  we  struggle  hard  and  toil  pain- 
fully. Like  the  little  child  with  his  printed  list 
for  Santa  Claus,  we  have  our  list,  longer  or 
shorter,  of  precious  things  which  we  hope  to  see 
brought  within  our  reach  before  we  are  gathered 
to  our  fathers.  The  difference  is  that  the  child 
is  satisfied  if  he  gets  one  thing  which  is  on  his  list. 
We  want  everything  on  ours.     The  world  is  full 


THE  CENTRAL  PEACE  u 

of  hurry  and  rush,  push  and  scramble,  each  man 
bent  on  winning  some  one  of  his  many  goals. 
But,  in  spite  of  this  excessive  effort  to  secure  the 
tangible  goods  of  the  earth,  it  is  nevertheless  true 
that  deep  down  in  the  heart  most  men  want  the 
peace  of  God.  If  you  have  an  opportunity  to 
work  your  way  into  that  secret  place  where  a 
man  really  lives,  you  will  find  that  he  knows  per- 
fectly well  that  he  is  missing  something.  This 
feeling  of  unrest  and  disquiet  gets  smothered  for 
long  periods  in  the  mass  of  other  aims,  and  some 
men  hardly  know  that  they  have  such  a  thing  as 
an  immortal  soul  hidden  away  within.  But,  even 
so,  it  will  not  remain  quiet.  It  cries  out  like  the 
lost  child  who  misses  his  home.  When  the  hard 
games  of  life  prove  losing  ones,  when  the  stupid- 
ity of  striving  so  fiercely  for  such  bubbles  comes 
over  him,  when  a  hand  from  the  dark  catches 
away  the  best  earthly  comfort  he  had,  when  the 
genuine  realities  of  life  assert  themselves  over 
sense,  he  wakes  up  to  find  himself  hungry  and 
thirsty  for  something  which  no  one  of  his  earthly 
pursuits  has  supplied  or  can  supply.  He  wants 
God.  He  wants  peace.  He  wants  to  feel  his 
life  founded  on  an  absolute  reality.  He  wants 
to  have  the  same  sort  of  peace  and  quiet  steal 
over  him  which  used  to  come  when  as  a  child  he 


12    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

ran  to  his  mother  and  had  all  the  ills  of  life  ban- 
ished from  thought  in  the  warm  love  of  her  em- 
brace. 

But  it  is  not  only  the  driving,  pushing  man,  am- 
bitious for  wealth  and  position,  who  misses  the 
best  thing  there  is  to  get  —  the  peace  of  God. 
Many  persons  who  are  directly  seeking  it  miss  it. 
Here  is  a  man  who  hopes  to  find  it  by  solving  all 
his  difficult  intellectual  problems.     When  he  can 
answer  the  hard  questions  which  life  puts  to  him, 
and  read  the  riddles  which  the  ages  have  left 
unread,  he  thinks  his  soul  will  feel  the  peace  of 
God.     Not  so,  because  each  problem  opens  into 
a  dozen  more.     It  is  a  noble  undertaking  to  help 
read  the  riddles  of  the  universe,  but  let  no  one 
expect  to  enter  into  the  peace  of  God  by  such  a 
path.     Here  is  another  person  who  devotes  her- 
self to  nothing  but  to  seeking  the  peace  of  God. 
Will  she  not  find  it?     Not  that  way.     It  is  not 
found  when  it  is  sought  for  its  own  sake.     He 
or  she  who  is  living  to  get  the  joy  of  divine  peace, 
who  would  "  have  no  joy  but  calm,"  will  probably 
never  have  the  peace  which  passeth  understand- 
ing.    Like  all  the  great  blessings,  it  comes  as  a 
by-product  when  one  is  seeking  something  else. 
Christ's  peace  came  to  him  not  because  he  sought 
it,  but  because  he  accepted  the  divine  will  which 


THE  CENTRAL  PEACE  13 

led  to  Gethsemane  and  Calvary.  Paul's  peace 
did  not  flow  over  him  while  he  was  in  Arabia 
seeking  it,  but  while  he  was  in  Nero's  prison, 
whither  the  path  of  his  labors  for  helping  men 
had  led  him.  He  who  forgets  himself  in  loving 
devotion,  he  who  turns  aside  from  his  self-seek- 
ing aims  to  carry  joy  into  any  life,  he  who  sets 
about  doing  any  task  for  the  love  of  God,  has 
found  the  only  possible  road  to  the  permanent 
peace  of  God. 

There  are  no  doubt  a  great  many  persons 
working  for  the  good  of  others  and  for  the  bet- 
terment of  the  world  who  yet  do  not  succeed  in 
securing  the  peace  of  God.  They  are  in  a  fre- 
quent state  of  nerves;  they  are  busy  here  and 
there,  rushing  about  perplexed  and  weary,  fussy 
and  irritable.  With  all  their  efforts  to  promote 
good  causes,  they  do  not  quite  attain  the  poise 
and  calm  of  interior  peace.  They  are  like  the 
tumultuous  surface  of  the  ocean  with  its  combers 
and  its  spray,  and  they  seldom  know  the  deep 
quiet  like  that  of  the  underlying,  submerged 
waters  far  below  the  surface.  The  trouble  with 
them  is  that  they  are  carrying  themselves  all  the 
time.  They  do  not  forget  themselves  in  their 
aims  of  service.  They  are  like  the  ill  person 
who  is  so  eager  to  get  well  that  he  keeps  watch- 


14    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

ing  his  tongue,  feeling  his  pulse,  and  getting  his 
weight.  Peace  does  not  come  to  one  who  is 
watching  continually  for  the  results  of  his  work, 
or  who  is  wondering  what  people  are  saying 
about  it,  or  who  is  envious  and  jealous  of  other 
persons  working  in  the  same  field,  or  who  is 
touchy  about  "honor"  or  recognition.  Those 
are  just  the  attitudes  which  frustrate  peace  and 
make  it  stay  away  from  one's  inner  self. 

There  is  a  higher  level  of  work  and  service 
and  ministry,  which,  thank  God,  men  like  us  can 
reach.  It  is  attained  when  one  swings  out  into 
a  way  of  life  which  is  motived  and  controlled  by 
genuine  sincere  love  and  devotion,  when  conse- 
cration obliterates  self-seeking,  when  in  some 
measure,  like  Christ,  the  worker  can  say  without 
reservations,  "  Not  my  will  but  thine  be  done." 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK 


TRYING  THE  BETTER  WAY 

A  very  fresh  and  unusual  type  of  book  has  re- 
cently appeared  under  the  title,  u  By  An  Un- 
known Disciple."  It  tells  in  a  simple,  direct, 
impressive  way,  after  the  manner  of  the  Gospels, 
the  story  of  Christ's  life  and  works  and  message. 
It  professes  to  be  written  by  one  who  was  an 
intimate  disciple,  and  who  was  therefore  an  eye- 
witness of  everything  told  in  the  book.  It  is  a 
vivid  narrative  and  leaves  the  reader  deeply 
moved,  because  it  brings  him  closer  than  most 
interpretations  do  into  actual  presence  of  and 
companionship  with  the  great  Galilean.  The 
first  chapter  is  a  re-interpretation  of  the  scene  on 
the  eastern  shore  of  Gennesaret,  where  Jesus 
casts  the  demons  out  of  the  maniac  of  Geresa. 
A  man  on  the  shore  of  the  lake  told  Jesus,  when 
he  landed  there  with  his  disciples  in  the  early 
morning,  that  it  was  not  safe  for  any  one  to  go 

15 


16    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

up  the  rugged  hillside,  because  there  were  mad- 
men hidden  there  among  the  tombs:  "  people  pos- 
sessed by  demons,  who  tear  their  flesh,  and  who 
can  be  heard  screaming  day  and  night." 

"  How  do  you  know  they  are  possessed  by 
demons?  "  asked  Jesus. 

"  What  else  could  it  be?"  said  the  man. 
"  There  are  none  that  can  master  them.  They 
are  too  fierce  to  be  tamed." 

"Has  any  man  tried  to  tame  them?"  asked 
Jesus. 

"  Yes,  Rabbi,  they  have  been  bound  with  chains 
and  fetters.  There  was  one  that  I  saw.  He 
plucked  the  fetters  from  him  as  a  child  might 
break  a  chain  of  field  flowers.  Then  he  ran 
foaming  into  the  wilderness,  and  no  man  dare 
pass  by  that  way  now.  .  .  ." 

"  Have  men  tried  only  this  way  to  tame  him?  " 
Jesus  asked. 

"  What  other  way  is  there,  Rabbi?  "  asked  the 
man. 

"  There  is  God's  way,"  said  Jesus.  "  Come, 
let  us  try  it." 

As  Jesus  spoke,  "  His  gaze  went  from  man  to 
man,"  the  writer  continues,  "  and  then  his  eyes 
fell  upon  me.  It  was  as  if  a  power  passed  from 
him  to  me,  and  immediately  something  inside  me 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      17 

answered,  '  Lead,  and  I   follow.'  "     The  narra- 
tive proceeds  to  describe  the  encounter  with  the 
demoniac    man    whose    name     was     "  Legion." 
"  He  ran  toward  us,  shrieking  and  bounding  in  the 
air.     He  had  two  sharp  stones  in  his  hand,  and 
as  he  leaped  he  cut  his  flesh  with  them  and  the 
blood  ran  down  his  naked  limbs.     The  men  be- 
hind us  scattered  and  fled  down  the  hill-side;  but 
Jesus  stood  still  and  waited."     The  effect  of  the 
calm,  undisturbed,  unfrightened  presence  of  Jesus 
was  astonishing.     It  was  as  though  a  new  force 
suddenly     came     into     operation.     The     jagged 
stones  were  thrown  from  his  hands,  for  he  recog- 
nized at  once  in  Jesus  a  friendly  presence  and  a 
helper  with  an  understanding  heart.     His   fear 
and  terror  left  the  demoniac  man  and  he  became 
quiet,     composed    and    like     a    normal    person. 
Meantime  some  of  the  men  who  ran  away  in  fear, 
when  the  madman  appeared,  frightened  a  herd  of 
swine  feeding  near  by,  and  in  their  uncontrolled 
terror  they  rushed  wildly  toward  the  headland 
of  the  lake   and  pitched  over  the  top  into  the 
water  where  they  were   drowned.     "  Fear  is  a 
foul  spirit,"  said  Jesus,  and  it  seemed  plain  and 
obvious  that  the  ungoverned  fear  which  played 
such  havoc  with  the  man  had  taken  possession 
also  of  the  misguided  swine.     It  was  the  same 


18    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

"  demon,"  fear.  A  little  later  in  the  day  when 
the  companions  of  Jesus  found  him  they  saw  the 
man  who  had  called  himself  "  Legion  "  sitting  at 
Jesus'  feet,  clothed  and  in  his  right  mind  —  a 
quieted  and  restored  person. 

We  now  know  that  this  disease,  called  "  pos- 
session," which  appears  so  often  in  the  New  Tes- 
tament accounts,  is  a  very  common  present-day 
trouble.  The  name  and  description  given  to  it 
in  the  Bible  make  it  often  seem  remote  and  un- 
familiar to  us,  but  it  is,  in  fact,  as  prevalent  in 
the  world  to-day  as  it  was  in  the  first  century. 
It  is  an  extreme  form  of  hysteria,  a  disorganiza- 
tion of  normal  functions,  often  causing  delusions, 
loss  of  memory,  the  performance  of  automatic 
actions,  and  sometimes  resulting  in  double,  or 
multiple,  personality,  a  condition  in  which  a  for- 
eign self  seems  to  usurp  the  control  of  the  body 
and  make  it  do  many  strange  and  unwilled  things. 
This  disease  is  known  in  very  many  cases  to  be 
produced  by  frights,  fear,  or  terror,  sometimes 
fears  long  hidden  away  and  more  or  less  sup- 
pressed. 

The  famous  cases  of  Doris  Fischer  and  Miss 
Beauchamp  were  both  of  this  type.  They  were 
only  extreme  instances  of  a  fairly  common  form 
of  mental  trouble,  generally  due  to  fears,   and 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      19 

capable  of  being  cured  by  wise,  skillful  under- 
standing and  loving  care,  applied  by  one  who 
shows  confidence  and  human  interest  and  who 
knows  how  to  use  the  powerful  influence  of  sug- 
gestion. Dr.  Morton  Prince,  who  has  reported 
these  two  cases,  has  achieved  cures  and  restora- 
tions that  read  like  miracles,  and  his  narratives 
tell  of  minds,  "  jangling,  harsh,  and  out  of  tune," 
broken  into  dissociated  selves,  which  have  been 
unified,  organized,  harmonized  and  restored  to 
normal  life.  Few  restorations  are  more  won- 
derful than  that  effected  upon  a  Philadelphia  girl 
under  the  direction  of  Dr.  Lightner  Witmer. 
The  girl  was  hopelessly  incorrigible,  stubborn, 
sullen,  suspicious,  and  stupid.  She  screamed, 
kicked,  and  bit  when  she  was  opposed,  and  she 
utterly  refused  to  obey  anybody.  So  unnatural 
and  dehumanized  was  she  that  she  was  generally 
called  "  Diabolical  Mary."  She  was  examined 
by  Dr.  Witmer,  underwent  some  simple  surgical 
operations  to  remove  her  obvious  physical  handi- 
caps, and  then  was  put  under  the  loving,  tender 
care  of  a  wise,  attractive,  and  understanding 
woman.  The  girl  responded  to  the  treatment  at 
once  and  soon  became  profoundly  changed,  and 
the  process  went  on  until  the  girl  became  a  wholly 
transformed  and  re-made  person. 


20    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

The  so-called  shell-shock  cases  which  have 
bulked  so  large  in  the  story  of  the  wastage  of 
men  in  all  armies  during  the  World  War,  turn 
out  to  be  cases  of  mental  disorganization,  occa- 
sioned for  the  most  part  by  immense  emotional 
upheaval,  especially  through  suppressed  fear. 
The  man  affected  with  the  trouble  has  seemed  to 
master  his  emotion.  He  has  not  winced  or 
shown  the  slightest  fear  in  the  face  of  danger; 
but  the  pent-up  emotion,  the  suppressed  fear  and 
terror,  insidiously  throw  the  entire  nervous 
mechanism  out  of  gear.  The  successful  treatment 
of  such  cases  is,  again,  like  that  for  hysteria,  one 
that  brings  confidence,  calm,  liberation  of  all 
strain  and  anxiety.  The  poor  victim  needs  a  pa- 
tient, wise,  skillful,  psychologically  trained  physi- 
cian, who  has  an  understanding  mind,  a  friendly, 
interested,  intimate  way,  a  spirit  of  love,  and  who 
can  arouse  expectation  of  recovery  and  can  sug- 
gest thoughts  of  health  and  the  right  emotional 
reactions.  This  method  of  cure  has  often  been 
tried  with  striking  effect  upon  the  so-called  crim- 
inal classes.  Prisoners  almost  always  respond 
constructively  to  the  personal  manifestation  of 
confidence,  sympathy,  and  love.  Elizabeth  Fry 
proved  this  principle  in  an  astonishing  way  with 
the    almost    brutalized    prisoners    in    Newgate. 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      21 

Thomas  Shillitoe's  visit  to  the  German  prisoners 
at  Spandau,  who  were  believed  to  be  beyond  all 
human  appeals,  though  not  so  well  known  and 
famous,  is  no  less  impressive  and  no  less  con- 
vincing. 

There  was  perhaps  never  a  time  in  the  history 
of  the  world  when  an  application  of  this  prin- 
ciple and  method  —  God's  way  —  was  so  needed 
in  the  social  sphere  of  life.  Whole  countries  have 
the  symptoms  which  appear  in  these  nervous  dis- 
eases. It  is  not  merely  an  individual  case  here 
and  there;  it  takes  on  a  corporate,  a  mass,  form. 
The  nerves  are  overstrained,  the  emotional  stress 
has  been  more  than  could  be  borne,  suppressed 
fears  have  produced  disorganization.  There  are 
signs  of  social  "  dissociation."  The  remedy  in 
such  cases  is  not  an  application  of  compelling 
force,  not  a  resort  to  chains  and  fetters,  not  a 
screwing  on  of  the  "  lid,"  not  a  method  of  starv- 
ing out  the  victims.  It  is  rather  an  application  of 
the  principle  which  has  always  worked  in  indi- 
vidual cases  of  "dissociation"  or  "possession" 
or  "  suppressed  fear  "  —  the  principle  of  sym- 
pathy, love  and  suggestion  —  what  Jesus,  in  the 
book  mentioned  above,  calls  "  God's  way."  The 
"  dissociation  "  of  labor  and  employers  in  the  so- 
cial group,  with  its  hysterical  signs  of  strikes  and 


22    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

lockouts,  upheaval  and  threats,  needs  just  now  a 
very  wise  physician.  Force,  restraint,  compul- 
sion, fastening  down  the  "  lid,"  imprisonment  of 
leaders,  drastic  laws  against  propaganda,  will  not 
cure  the  disease,  any  more  than  chains  cured  the 
poor  sufferer  on  the  shores  of  Gennesaret.  The 
situation  must  first  of  all  be  understood.  The 
inner  attitude  behind  the  acts  and  deeds  must  be 
taken  into  account.  The  social  mental  state  must 
be  diagnosed.  The  remedy,  to  be  a  remedy,  must 
remove  the  causes  which  produce  the  dissociation. 
It  can  be  accomplished  only  by  one  who  has  an 
understanding  heart,  a  good  will,  an  unselfish  pur- 
pose, and  a  comprehending,  i.e.,  a  unifying,  sug- 
gestion of  cooperation. 

This  way  is  no  less  urgent  for  the  solution  of 
the  most  acute  international  situations.  It  has 
been  assumed  too  long  and  too  often  that  these 
situations  can  be  best  handled  by  unlimited  meth- 
ods of  restraint,  coercion,  and  reduction  to  help- 
lessness. Some  of  the  countries  of  Europe  have 
been  plainly  suffering  from  neurasthenia,  dissocia- 
tion>  and  the  kindred  forms  of  emotional,  fear- 
caused  diseases.  Starvation  always  makes  for 
types  of  hysteria.  It  will  not  do  now  to  apply, 
with  cold,  precise  logic,  the  old  vindictive  principle 
that  when  the   sinner  has  been  made  to   suffer 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      23 

enough  to  "  cover  "  the  enormity  of  his  sin  he 
can  then  be  restored  to  respectable  society.  It 
is  not  vindication  of  justice  which  most  concerns 
the  world  now;  it  is  a  return  of  health,  a  restora- 
tion of  normal  functions,  a  reconstruction  of  the 
social  body.  That  task  calls  for  the  application 
of  the  deeper,  truer  principles  of  life.  It  calls 
for  a  knowing  heart,  an  understanding  method,  a 
healing  plan,  a  sympathetic  guide  who  can  obliter- 
ate the  fear-attitude  and  suggest  confidence  and 
unity  and  trustful  human  relationships.  Those 
great  words,  used  in  the  Epistle  of  London  Yearly 
Meeting  of  Friends  in  19 17,  need  to  be  revived 
and  put  to  an  experimental  venture :  u  Love  knows 
no  frontiers."  There  is  no  limit  to  its  healing 
force,  there  are  no  conditions  it  does  not  meet, 
there  is  no  terminus  to  its  constructive  operations. 


II 

HE    CAME   TO    HIMSELF 

Was  there  ever  such  a  short-story  character 
sketch  as  this  one  of  the  prodigal  son!  No  real- 
ism of  details,  no  elaboration  of  his  sins,  and  yet 
the  immortal  picture  is  burned  forever  into  our 
imagination.     The  debacle  of  his  life  is  as  clear 


24    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

and  vivid  as  words  can  portray  the  ruin.  Yet 
the  phrase  which  arrests  us  most  as  we  read  the 
compact  narrative  of  his  undoing  is  not  the  one 
which  tells  about  "  riotous  living,"  or  the  reck- 
less squandering  of  his  patrimony,  or  his  hunger 
for  swine  husks,  or  his  unshod  feet  and  the  loss 
of  his  tunic;  it  is  rather  the  one  which  says  that 
when  he  was  at  the  bottom  of  his  fortune  "  he 
came  to  himself." 

He  had  not  been  himself  then,  before.  He  was 
not  finding  himself  in  the  life  of  riotous  indul- 
gence. That  did  not  turn  out  after  all  to  be  the 
life  for  which  he  was  meant.  He  missed  himself 
more  than  he  missed  his  lost  shoes  and  tunic. 
That  raises  a  nice  question  which  is  worth  an 
answer:  When  is  a  person  his  real  self?  When 
can  he  properly  say,  "  At  last  I  have  found  my- 
self; I  am  what  I  want  to  be?"  Robert  Louis 
Stevenson  has  given  us  in  Dr.  Jekyll  and  Mr. 
Hyde  a  fine  parable  of  the  actual  double  self  in 
us  all,  a  higher  and  a  lower  self  under  our  one 
hat.  But  I  ask,  which  is  the  real  me?  Is  it 
Jekyll  or  is  it  Hyde?  Is  it  the  best  that  we 
can  be  or  is  it  this  worse  thing  which  we  just 
now  are? 

Most  answers  to  the  question  would  be,  I 
think,  that  the  real  self  is  that  ideal  self  of  which 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      25 

in  moments  of  rare  visibility  we  sometimes  catch 
glimpses. 

"  All  I  could  never  be, 
All,  men  ignored  in  me, 
This,  I  was  worth  to  God,  whose  wheel 

the  pitcher  shaped." 

"  Dig  deep  enough  into  any  man,"  St.  Augus- 
tine said,  "  and  you  will  find  something  divine." 
We  supposed  he  believed  in  total  depravity,  and 
he  does  in  theory  believe  in  it;  but  when  it  is  a 
matter  of  actual  experience,  he  announces  this 
deep  fact  which  fits  perfectly  with  his  other  great 
utterance:  "  Thou,  O  God,  hast  made  us  for  thy- 
self, and  we  are  restless  (dissatisfied)  until  we 
find  ourselves  in  thee." 

Too  long  we  have  assumed  that  Adam,  the  fail- 
ure, is  the  type  of  our  lives,  that  he  is  the  normal 
man,  that  to  err  is  human,  and  that  one  touch,  that 
is,  blight,  of  nature  makes  all  men  kin.  What 
Christ  has  revealed  to  us  is  the  fact  that  we 
always  have  higher  and  diviner  possibilities  in  us. 
He,  the  overcomer,  and  not  Adam,  is  the  true 
type,  the  normal  person,  giving  us  at  last  the 
pattern  of  life  which  is  life  indeed. 

Which  is  the  real  self,  then?  Surely  this  higher 
possible  self,  this  one  which  we  discover  in  our 
best  moments.    The  Greeks  always  held  that  sin 


26    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

was  "  missing  the  mark "  —  that  is  what  the 
Greek  word  for  sin  means  —  failure  to  arrive  at, 
to  reach,  the  real  end  toward  which  life  aims. 
Sin  is  defeat.  It  is  loss  of  the  trail.  It  is  undo- 
ing. The  sinner  has  not  found  himself,  he  has 
not  come  to  himself.  He  has  missed  the  real 
me.     He  cannot  say,  "  I  am." 

If  that  is  a  fact,  and  if  the  life  of  spiritual 
health  and  attainment  is  the  normal  life,  we 
surely  ought  to  do  more  than  is  done  to  help 
young  people  to  realize  it  and  to  assist  them  to 
find  themselves.  We  are  much  more  concerned 
to  manufacture  things  than  we  are  to  make  per- 
sons. We  do  one  very  well  and  we  do  the  other 
very  badly.  Kipling's  "  The  Ship  that  Found 
Itself  '  is  a  fine  account  of  the  care  bestowed 
upon  every  rivet  and  screw,  every  valve  and 
piston.  He  pictures  the  ship  in  the  stress  and 
strain  of  a  great  storm  and  each  part  of  the  ship 
from  keel  to  funnel  describes  what  it  has  to  bear 
and  to  do  in  the  emergency  and  how  it  has  been 
prepared  in  advance  for  just  this  crisis.  Nansen 
was  asked  how  he  felt  when  he  found  that  the 
Fram  was  caught  in  the  awful  jam  of  the  Arctic 
ice-floe.  "  I  felt  perfectly  calm,"  he  said.  "I 
knew  she  could  stand  it.  I  had  watched  every 
stick  of  timber  and  every  piece  of  steel  that  went 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      27 

into  her  hull.  The  result  was  that  I  could  go  to 
sleep  and  let  the  ice  do  its  worst."  With  even 
more  care  we  build  the  airplane.  There  must  be 
no  chance  for  capricious  action.  The  propeller 
blades  must  be  made  of  perfect  wood.  There 
must  be  no  defect  in  any  piece  of  the  structure. 
The  gasoline  must  be  tested  by  all  the  methods  of 
refinement.  The  oil  must  be  absolutely  pure,  free 
of  every  suspicion  of  grit. 

But  when  we  turn  from  ships  and  airplanes  to 
the  provisions  for  training  young  persons  we  are 
in  a  different  world.  The  element  of  chance  now 
bulks  very  large.  We  let  the  youth  have  pretty 
free  opportunity  to  begin  his  malformation  be- 
fore we  begin  seriously  to  construct  him  on  right 
lines.  We  fail  to  note  what  an  enormous  fact 
"  disposition  "  is,  and  we  take  little  pains  to  form 
it  early  and  to  form  it  in  the  best  way.  We  are 
far  too  apt  to  assume  that  all  the  fundamentals 
come  by  the  road  of  heredity.  We  overwork  this 
theory  as  much  as  earlier  theologians  overworked 
their  dogma  of  original  sin  from  poor  old  Adam. 

The  fact  is  that  temperament  and  disposition 
and  the  traits  of  character  which  most  definitely 
settle  destiny  are  at  least  as  much  formed  in 
those  early  critical  years  of  infancy  as  they  are 
acquired  by  the  strains  of  heredity.     Education, 


28     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

which  is  more  essential  to  the  greatness  of  any- 
country  than  even  its  manufactures,  is  one  of  the 
most  neglected  branches  of  life.  We  take  it  as 
we  find  it — -and  lay  its  failures  to  Providence 
as  we  do  deaths  from  typhoid.  It  must  not  al- 
ways be  so.  We  must  be  as  greatly  concerned  to 
form  virile  character  in  our  boys  and  girls  and 
to  develop  in  them  the  capacity  for  moral  and 
spiritual  leadership  in  this  crisis  as  we  are  con- 
cerned over  our  coal  supply  or  our  industries. 
There  are  ways  of  assisting  the  higher  self  to 
control  and  dominate  the  life,  ways  by  which 
the  ideal  person  can  become  the  real  person. 
Why  not  consider  seriously  how  to  do  that? 

He  that  overcomes,  the  prophet  of  Patmos 
says,  receives  a  white  stone  with  a  new  name 
written  on  it,  which  no  man  knoweth  save  he  that 
hath  it.  It  is  a  symbolism  which  may  mean  many 
things.  It  seems  at  least  to  mean  that  he  who 
subdues  his  lower  self,  holds  out  in  the  strain  of 
life,  and  lives  by  the  highest  that  he  knows,  will 
as  a  consequence  receive  a  distinct  individuality, 
a  clearly  defined  self,  instead  of  being  blurred  in 
with  the  great  level  mass  —  a  self  with  a  name 
of  its  own.  And  that  self  will  not  be  the  old 
familiar  self  that  everybody  knows  by  traits  of 
past  achievement  and  by  the  old  tendencies   of 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      29 

habit.  It  will  be  the  self  which  only  God  and 
the  person  himself  in  his  deepest  and  most  inti- 
mate moments  knew  was  possible  —  and  here  at 
last  it  is  found  to  be  the  real  self.  The  man 
can  say,  "  I  am."    He  has  come  to  himself. 

We  ask,  at  the  end,  whether  it  may  not  be 
that  the  world  will  soon  come  to  itself  and  dis- 
cover the  way  back  to  some  of  its  missed  ideals. 
Here  on  a  large  scale  we  have  the  story  of  a  des- 
perate hunger,  squandered  wealth,  lost  shoes,  lost 
tunics,  and  even  more  precious  things  gone  —  a 
world  that  has  missed  its  way  and  is  floundering 
about  without  sufficient  vision  or  adequate  leader- 
ship. If  it  could  only  come  to  itself,  discover 
what  its  true  mission  is  and  where  its  real  sources 
of  power  and  its  line  of  progress  lie,  it  would 
still  find  that  God  and  man  together  can  rebuild 
what  man  by  his  blunders  has  destroyed. 


Ill 

SOME  NEW  REASONS   FOR   "  LOVING   ENEMIES  " 

Nobody  ever  amounts  to  anything  who  lives 
without  conflict  with  obstacles.  It  seems  to  be  a 
law  of  the  universe  that  nothing  really  good  can 
be  got  or  held  by  soft,  easy  means. 


30    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

The  Persians  were  so  impressed  with  this  stern 
condition  of  life  that  they  interpreted  the  uni- 
verse as  the  scene  of  endless  warfare  between  hos- 
tile powers  of  the  invisible  world.  Ormuzd,  the 
god  of  light,  and  Ahriman,  the  god  of  darkness, 
were  believed  to  be  engaged  in  a  continual  Arma- 
geddon. There  could  be  no  truce  in  the  strife 
until  one  or  the  other  should  win  the  victory  by 
the  annihilation  of  his  opponent.  This  Persian 
dualism  has  touched  all  systems  of  thought  and 
has  left  its  influence  upon  all  the  religions  of  the 
world.  The  reasons  why  it  has  appealed  so  pow- 
erfully to  men  of  all  generations  are,  of  course, 
that  there  is  so  much  conflict  involved  in  life  and 
that  no  achievement  of  goodness  is  ever  made 
without  a  hard  battle  for  it  against  opposing 
forces.  But  if  all  this  opposition  and  struggle 
is  due  to  an  "  enemy,"  we  certainly  ought  to  love 
this  "  enemy,"  because  it  turns  out  to  be  the  great- 
est possible  blessing  to  us  that  we  are  forced  to 
struggle  with  difficulties  and  to  wrestle  for  what 
we  get. 

11  Count  it  all  joy,"  said  the  Apostle  James  in 
substance,  writing  to  his  friends  of  the  Disper- 
sion, "  when  you  fall  into  manifold  testings,  or 
trials,  knowing  that  the  proving  of  your  faith 
worketh  steadfastness,  and  let  steadfastness  have 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      31 

its  perfect  work,  that  ye  may  be  perfect  and  en- 
tire, lacking  in  nothing."  St.  Paul  thought  once 
that  his  "  thorn  in  the  flesh  "  was  conferred  upon 
him  by  Satan  and  was  the  malicious  messenger  of 
an  enemy;  but  in  the  slow  process  of  experience 
he  came  to  see  that  the  painful  "  thorn  "  exer- 
cised a  real  ministry  in  his  life,  that  through  his 
suffering  and  hardship  he  got  a  higher  meaning 
of  God's  grace;  and  he  discovered  that  divine 
power  was  thus  made  perfect  through  his  weak- 
ness, so  that  he  learned  to  love  the  "  enemy " 
that  buffeted  him. 

The  Psalmist  who  wrote  our  best  loved  psalm, 
the  twenty-third,  thought  at  first  that  God  was 
his  Shepherd  because  he  led  him  in  green  pas- 
tures and  beside  still  waters  where  there  was  no 
struggle  and  no  enemy  to  fear.     But  he  learned 
at  length  that  in  the  dark  valleys  of  the  shadow 
and  on  the  rough  jagged  hillsides  God  was  no 
less  a  good  Shepherd  than  on  the  level  plains  and 
in  the  lush  grass;  and  he  found  at  last  that  even 
"  in  the  presence  of  enemies  "   he  could  be  fed 
with  good  things  and  have  his  table  spread.     The 
overflowing  cup  and  the  anointed  head  were  not 
discovered  on  the  lower  levels  of  ease  and  com- 
fort;  they   came   out  of  the   harder   experiences 
when  "  enemies  "  of  his  peace  were  busy  supply- 


32     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

ing  obstacles  and  perplexities  for  him  to  over- 
come. 

It  is  no  accident  that  the  book  of  Revelation 
puts  so  much  stress  upon  "  overcoming."  The 
world  seemed  to  the  prophet  on  the  volcanic 
island  of  Patmos  essentially  a  place  of  strife  and 
conflict  —  an  Armageddon  of  opposing  forces. 
There  are  no  beatitudes  in  this  book  promised  to 
any  except  "  overcomers." 

"  Not  to  one  church  alone,  but  seven 
The  voice  prophetic  spake  from  heaven; 
And  unto  each  the  promise  came, 
Diversified,  but  still  the  same  ; 
For  him  that  overcometh  are 
The  new  name  written  on  the  stone, 
The  raiment  white,  the  crown,  the  throne, 
And  I  will  give  him  the  Morning  Star!" 

But  the  conflict  that  ends  in  such  results  can 
not  be  called  misfortune,  any  more  than  Hercules' 
labors  through  which  the  legendary  hero  won  his 
immortality  can  be  pronounced  a  misfortune  for 
him.  Once  more,  then,  the  saint  who  has  over- 
come discovers,  at  least  in  retrospect,  that  there 
is  good  ground  for  loving  his  "  enemies  " ! 

The  farmer,  in  his  unceasing  struggle  with 
weeds,  with  parasites,  with  pests  visible  and  in- 


THE  GREAT  ENERGIES  THAT  WORK      33 

visible,  with  blight  and  rot  and  uncongenial 
weather,  sometimes  feels  tempted  to  blaspheme 
against  the  hard  conditions  under  which  he  labors 
and  to  assume  that  an  "  enemy  "  has  cursed  the 
ground  which  he  tills  and  loaded  the  dice  of  na- 
ture against  him.  The  best  cure  for  his  "  mood  " 
is  to  visit  the  land  of  the  bread-fruit  tree,  where 
nature  does  everything  and  man  does  nothing  but 
eat  what  is  gratuitously  given  him,  and  to  see 
there  the  kind  of  men  you  get  under  those  kindly 
skies.  The  virile  fiber  of  muscle,  the  strong 
manly  frame,  the  keen  active  mind  that  meets 
each  new  "  pest  "  with  a  successful  invention,  the 
spirit  of  conquest  and  courage  that  are  revealed 
in  the  farmer  at  his  best  are  no  accident.  They 
are  the  by-product  of  his  battle  with  conditions, 
which  if  they  seem  to  come  from  an  "  enemy," 
must  come  from  one  that  ought  to  be  loved  for 
what  he  accomplishes. 

These  critics  of  ours  who  harshly  review  the 
books  we  write,  the  addresses  we  give,  the 
schemes  of  reform  for  which  we  work  so  strenu- 
ously—  do  they  do  nothing  for  us?  On  the  con- 
trary, they  force  us  to  go  deeper,  to  write  with 
more  care,  to  reconsider  our  hasty  generaliza- 
tions, to  recast  our  pet  schemes,  to  revise  our 
crude  endeavors.    They  may  speak  as  "  enemies;" 


34    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

and  they  may  show  a  stern  and  hostile  face;  but 
we  do  well  to  love  them,  for  they  enable  us  to 
find  our  better  self  and  our  deeper  powers.  The 
hand  may  be  the  horny  hand  of  Esau,  but  the 
voice  is  the  kindly  voice  of  Jacob. 

All  sorts  of  things  "  work  "  for  us,  then,  as 
St.  Paul  declared.  Not  only  does  love  "  work," 
and  faith  and  grace;  but  tribulation  "works," 
and  affliction,  and  the  seemingly  hostile  forces 
which  block  and  buffet  and  hamper  us.  Every- 
thing that  drives  us  deeper,  that  draws  us  closer 
to  the  great  resources  of  life,  that  puts  vigor  into 
our  frame  and  character  into  our  souls,  is  in  the 
last  resort  a  blessing  to  us,  even  though  it  seems 
on  superficial  examination  to  be  the  work  of  an 
"  enemy,"  and  we  shall  be  wise  if  we  learn  to 
love  the  "  enemies  "  that  give  us  the  chance  to 
overcome  and  to  attain  our  true  destiny.  Perhaps 
the  dualism  of  the  universe  is  not  quite  as  sharp 
as  the  old  Persians  thought.  Perhaps,  too,  the 
love  of  God  reaches  further  under  than  we  some- 
times suppose.  Perhaps  in  fact  all  things  "  work 
together  for  good,"  and  even  the  enemy  forces 
are  helping  to  achieve  the  ultimate  good  that  shall 
be  revealed  "  when  God  hath  made  the  pile  com- 
plete." 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  POWER  THAT  WORKETH  IN  US 


WHERE  THE  BEYOND  BREAKS  THROUGH 

If  we  sprinkle  iron  filings  over  a  sheet  of  paper 
and  move  a  magnet  beneath  the  paper,  the  filings 
become  active  and  combine  and  recombine  in  a 
great  variety  of  groupings  and  regroupings.  A 
beholder  who  knows  nothing  of  the  magnet  un- 
derneath gazes  upon  the  whole  affair  with  a  sense 
of  awe  and  mystery,  though  he  feels  all  the  time 
that  there  must  be  some  explanation  of  the  ac- 
tion and  that  some  hidden  power  behind  is  oper- 
ating as  the  cause  of  the  groupings  and  regroup- 
ings of  the  iron  particles.  Something  certainly 
that  we  do  not  see  is  revealing  its  presence  and  its 
power. 

Our  everyday  experience  is  full  of  another 
series  of  activities  even  more  mysterious  than 
these  movements  of  the  iron.  Whenever  we  open 
our  eyes  we  see  objects  and  colors  confronting 
us  and  located  in  spaces   far  and  near.     What 

35 


36    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

brings  the  object  to  us?  What  operates  to  pro- 
duce the  contact?  How  does  the  far-away  thing 
hit  our  organ  of  vision?  This  was  to  the  ancient 
philosopher  a  most  difficult  problem,  a  real  mys- 
tery. He  made  many  guesses  at  a  solution,  but 
no  guess  which  he  could  make  satisfied  his  judg- 
ment. Our  answer  is  that  an  invisible  and  in- 
tangible substance  which  we  call  ether  —  lumini- 
f erous  ether  —  fills  all  space,  even  the  space  oc- 
cupied by  visible  objects,  and  that  this  ether  which 
is  capable  of  amazing  vibrations,  billions  of  them 
a  second,  is  set  vibrating  at  different  velocities  by 
different  objects.  These  vibrations  bombard  the 
minute  rods  and  cones  of  the  retina  at  the  back 
of  the  eye  and,  presto,  we  see  now  one  color  and 
now  another,  now  one  object  and  now  another. 
This  ether  would  forever  have  remained  unknown 
to  us  had  not  this  marvelous  structure  of  the  re- 
tina given  it  a  chance  to  break  through  and  reveal 
itself.  In  many  other  ways,  too,  this  ether  breaks 
through  into  revelation.  It  is  responsible  ap- 
parently for  all  the  immensely  varied  phenomena 
of  electricity,  probably,  too,  of  cohesion  and 
gravitation.  Here,  again,  the  revelations  re- 
mained inadequate  and  without  clear  interpreta- 
tion until  we  succeeded  in  constructing  proper  in- 
struments and  devices  for  it  to  break  through  into 


THE  POWER  THAT  WORKETH  IN  US      37 

active  operation.  The  dynamo  and  the  other 
electrical  mechanisms  which  we  have  invented  do 
not  make  or  create  electricity.  They  merely  let  it 
come  through,  showing  itself  now  as  light,  now  as 
heat,  now  again  as  motive  power.  But  always 
it  was  there  before,  unnoted,  merely  potential, 
and  yet  a  vast  surrounding  ocean  of  energy  there 
behind,  ready  to  break  into  active  operation  when 
the  medium  was  at  hand  for  it. 

Life  is  another  one  of  those  strange  mysteries 
that  cannot  be  explained  until  we  realize  that 
something  more  than  we  see  is  breaking  through 
matter  and  revealing  itself.  The  living  thing  is 
letting  through  some  greater  power  than  itself, 
something  beyond  and  behind,  which  is  needed  to 
account  for  what  we  see  moving  and  acting  with 
invention  and  purpose.  Matter  of  itself  is  no  ex- 
planation of  life.  The  same  elemental  stuff  is 
very  different  until  it  becomes  the  instrument  of 
something  not  itself  which  organizes  it,  pushes 
it  upward  and  onward,  and  reveals  itself  through 
it.  Something  has  at  length  come  into  view  which 
is  more  than  force  and  mechanism.  Here  is  in- 
telligent purpose  and  forward-looking  activity 
and  something  capable  of  variation,  novelty,  and 
surprise.  And  when  living  substance  has  reached 
a  certain  stage  of  organization,  something  higher 


38     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

still  begins  to  break  through  —  consciousness  ap- 
pears, and  on  its  higher  levels  consciousness  be- 
gins to  reveal  truth  and  moral  goodness.     It  is 
useless   to   try  to   explain   consciousness  —  espe- 
cially truth-bearing  consciousness  —  as  a  function 
of  the  brain,  for  it  cannot  be  done.    That  way  of 
explanation  no  more  explains  mind  than  the  Ptole- 
maic theory  explains  the  movements  of  the  heav- 
enly   bodies.       Once    more,     something    breaks 
through  and  reveals  itself,  as  surely  as  light  breaks 
through  a  prism  and  reveals  itself  in  the  band 
of  spectral  colors.     This  consciousness  of  ours, 
as  I  have  said,  is  not  merely  awareness,  not  only 
intelligent  response;  it  lays  hold  of  and  appre- 
hends, i.  e.,  reveals,  truth  and  goodness.     What 
I  think,  when  I  really  think,  is  not  just  my  pri- 
vate "opinion,"  or   "guess,"   or  "seeming";   it 
turns  out  to  have  something  universal  and  abso- 
lute about  it.     My  multiplication-table  is  every- 
body's multiplication-table.     It  is  true  for  me  and 
for  beyond  me.     And  what  is  true  of  my  mathe- 
matics is  also  true  of  other  features  of  my  think- 
ing.    When  I  properly  organize  my  experience 
through   rightly  formed  concepts,   I   express   as- 
pects that  are  real  and  true  for  everybody  —  I 
attain  to  something  which  can  be  called   truth. 
The  same  way  in  the  field  of  conduct:  I  can  dis- 


THE  POWER  THAT  WORKETH  IN  US      39 

cover  not  only  what  is  subjectively  right,  but  I 
can  go  farther  and  embody  principles  which  are 
right  not  only  for  me  but  for  every  good  man. 
Something  more  than  a  petty,  tiny,  private  con- 
sciousness is  expressing  itself  through  my  person- 
ality. I  am  the  organ  of  something  more  than 
myself. 

Perhaps  more  wonderful  still  is  the  way  in 
which  beauty  breaks  through.  It  breaks  through 
not  only  at  a  few  highly  organized  points,  it 
breaks  through  almost  everywhere.  Even  the 
minutest  things  reveal  it  as  well  as  do  the  sublim- 
est  things,  like  the  stars.  Whatever  one  sees 
through  the  microscope,  a  bit  of  mould  for  exam- 
ple, is  charged  with  beauty.  Everything  from  a 
dewdrop  to  Mount  Shasta  is  the  bearer  of  beauty. 
And  yet  beauty  has  no  function,  no  utility.  Its 
value  is  intrinsic,  not  extrinsic.  It  is  its  own  ex- 
cuse for  being.  It  greases  no  wheels,  it  bakes  no 
puddings.  It  is  a  gift  of  sheer  grace,  a  gratuitous 
largess.  It  must  imply  behind  things  a  Spirit  that 
enjoys  beauty  for  its  own  sake  and  that  floods 
the  world  everywhere  with  it.  Wherever  it  can 
break  through  it  does  break  through,  and  our  joy 
in  it  shows  that  we  are  in  some  sense  kindred  to 
the  giver  and  revealer  of  it. 

Something    higher    and    greater    still    breaks 


40    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

through  and  reveals  a  deeper  Reality  than  any 
that  we  see  and  touch.  Love  comes  through  — 
not  everywhere  like  beauty,  but  only  where  rare 
organization  has  prepared  an  organ  for  it.  Some 
aspects  of  love  appear  very  widely,  are,  at  least, 
as  universal  as  truth  and  moral  goodness.  But 
love  in  its  full  glory,  love  in  its  height  of  unselfish- 
ness and  with  its  passion  of  self-giving  is  a  rare 
manifestation.  One  person  —  the  Galilean  — 
has  been  a  perfect  revealing  organ  of  it.  In  his 
life  it  broke  through  with  the  same  perfect  natu- 
ralness as  the  beam  of  light  breaks  through  the 
prism  of  waterdrops  and  reveals  the  rainbow. 
Love  that  understands,  sympathizes,  endures,  in- 
spires, recreates,  and  transforms,  broke  through 
and  revealed  itself  so  impressively  that  those  who 
see  it  and  feel  it  are  convinced  that  here  at  last 
the  real  nature  of  God  has  come  through  to  us 
and  stands  revealed.  And  St.  Paul,  who  was  abso- 
lutely convinced  of  this,  went  still  further.  He 
held,  with  a  faith  buttressed  in  experience,  that 
this  same  Christ,  who  had  made  this  demonstra- 
tion of  love,  became  after  his  resurrection  an  in- 
visible presence,  a  life-giving  Spirit  who  could 
work  and  act  as  a  resident  power  within  recep- 
tive, responsive,  human  spirits,  and  could  trans- 
form them  into  a  likeness  to  himself  and  continue 


THE  POWER  THAT  WORKETH  IN  US      41 

his  revelation  of  love  wherever  he  should  find 
such  organs  of  revelation.  If  that,  or  something 
like  it,  is  true  it  is  a  very  great  truth.  It  was  this 
that  good  old  William  Dell  meant  when  he  said: 
"  The  believer  is  the  only  book  in  which  God  him- 
self writes  his  New  Testament." 


II 

CONQUERING  BY  AN  INNER  FORCE 

There  are  few  texts  that  have  been  more  dy- 
namic in  the  history  of  spiritual  religion  than  the 
one  which  forms  the  keynote  of  the  message  of 
the  little  book  of  Habakkuk:  "The  righteous 
man  lives  by  faith  "(2:4).  It  became  the  cen- 
tral feature  of  St.  Paul's  message.  It  was  the 
epoch-making  discovery  in  Luther's  experience, 
and  it  has  always  been  the  guiding  principle  of 
Protestant  Christianity. 

The  profound  significance  of  the  words  is  often 
missed  because  the  text  is  so  easily  turned  into  a 
phrase  that  is  supposed  just  of  itself  to  work  a 
kind  of  magic  spell,  and  secondly  because  the 
meaning  of  "  faith  "  is  so  frequently  misinter- 
preted. When  we  go  back  to  the  original  experi- 
ence out  of  which  the  famous  text  was  born  we 


42    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

can  get  fresh  light  upon  the  heart  of  its  meaning. 
The  little  book  begins  with  a  searching  analysis 
of  the  conditions  of  the  time.  With  an  almost 
unparalleled  boldness  the  prophet  challenges  God 
to  explain  why  the  times  are  so  badly  out  of  joint, 
why  the  social  order  is  so  topsy-turvy,  and  why 
injustice  is  allowed  to  run  a  long  course  un- 
checked. God  seems  unconcerned  with  affairs  — 
the  moral  pilot  appears  not  to  be  steering  things. 
Then  comes  a  moment  of  mental  relief.  The 
prophet  hits  upon  the  conclusion,  arrived  at  by 
other  prophets  also,  that  God  is  about  to  use  the 
Chaldeans  as  a  divine  instrument  to  chastise  the 
wicked  element  in  the  nation,  to  right  the  wrongs 
of  the  disordered  world,  and  to  execute  judgment. 
But  as  he  begins  to  reflect  he  becomes  more  per- 
plexed than  ever.  How  can  God,  who  is  good,  use 
such  a  terrible  instrument  for  moral  purposes? 
This  people,  which  is  assumed  to  be  an  instru- 
ment of  moral  judgment  in  a  disordered  world, 
is  itself  unspeakably  perverse.  It  is  fierce  and 
wolfish.  Its  only  god  is  might.  It  cares  only  for 
success.  It  catches  men,  like  fish,  in  its  great 
dragnet,  and  "  then  he  sacrificeth  unto  his  net  and 
burneth  incense  unto  his  drag."  How  can  such  a 
pitiless  and  insolent  people,  dominated  by  pride 
and  love  of  conquest,  be  used  to  work  out  the  ends 


THE  POWER  THAT  WORKETH  IN  US      43 

of  righteousness  and  to  act  for  God  who  is  too 
pure  even  to  look  upon  that  which  is  evil  and 
wrong?  Here  the  prophet  finds  himself  suddenly 
up  against  the  ancient  problem  of  the  moral  gov- 
ernment of  the  universe  and  the  deep  mystery  of 
evil  in  it.  He  cannot  untangle  the  snarled 
threads  of  his  skein.  No  solution  of  the  mystery 
lies  at  hand.  He  decides  to  climb  up  into  his 
"  watch-tower "  and  wait  for  an  answer  from 
God.  If  it  does  not  come  at  once,  he  proposes 
to  stay  until  it  does  come  —  "  if  it  tarry,  wait  for 
it;  it  will  surely  come."  At  length  the  vision 
comes,  so  clear  that  a  man  running  can  read  it. 
It  is  just  this  famous  discovery  of  the  great  text 
that  a  man  cannot  hope  to  get  the  world-difficul- 
ties all  straightened  out  to  suit  him,  he  cannot 
in  some  easy  superficial  way  justify  the  ways  of 
God  in  the  course  of  history;  but,  at  least,  he  can 
live  unswervingly  and  victoriously  by  his  own 
soul's  insight,  the  insight  of  faith  that  God  can 
be  trusted  to  do  the  right  thing  for  the  universe 
which  he  is  steering.  It  is  beautifully  expressed  in 
a  well-known  stanza  of  Whittier's: 

"  I  know  not  where  His  islands  lift 
Their  fronded  palms  in  air; 
I  only  know  I  cannot  drift 
Beyond  His  love  and  care." 


44    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

Many  things  remain  unexplained.  The  mys- 
teries are  not  all  dissipated.  But  I  see  enough 
light  to  enable  me  to  hold  a  steady  course  on- 
ward, and  I  have  an  inner  confidence  in  God 
which  nothing  in  the  outward  world  can  shatter. 
This  is  the  message  from  Habakkuk's  watch- 
tower:  There  is  a  faith  which  goes  so  far  into 
the  heart  of  things  that  a  man  can  live  by  it  and 
stand  all  the  water-spouts  which  break  upon  him. 

Josiah  Royce  once  defined  faith  as  an  insight 
of  the  soul  by  which  one  can  stand  everything  that 
can  happen  to  him,  and  that  is  what  this  text 
means.  You  arrive  at  such  a  personal  assurance 
of  God's  character  that  you  can  face  any  event 
and  not  be  swept  off  your  feet.  If  this  is  so,  it 
means  that  the  most  important  achievement  in  a 
man's  career  is  the  attainment  of  just  this  inner 
vision,  the  acquisition  of  an  interior  spiritual  con- 
fidence which  itself  is  the  victory. 

William  James  used  often  to  close  his  lecture 
courses  at  Harvard  with  what  he  called  a  "  Faith- 
ladder."  Round  after  round  it  went  up  from  a 
mere  possibility  of  hope  to  an  inner  conviction 
strong  enough  to  dominate  action.  He  would  be- 
gin with  some  human  faith  which  outstrips  evi- 
dence and  he  would  say  of  it:  It  is  at  least  not 
absurd,  not  self-contradictory,  and,  therefore,  it 


THE  POWER  THAT  WORKETH  IN  US      45 

might  be  true  under  certain  conditions,  in  some 
kind  of  a  world  which  we  can  conceive.  It  may 
be  true  even  in  this  world  and  under  existing  con- 
ditions. It  is  fit  to  be  true;  it  ought  to  be  true. 
The  soul  in  its  moment  of  clearest  insight  feels 
that  it  must  be  true.  It  shall  be  true,  then,  at 
least  for  me,  for  I  propose  to  act  upon  it,  to  live 
by  it,  to  stake  my  existence  on  it. 

This  watch-tower   of  Habakkuk  is   a   similar 
faith-ladder.    He  sees  no  way  to  explain  why  the 
good  suffer,  or  to  account  for  the  catastrophes  of 
history,  but  at  least  he  has  found  a  faith  in  God 
which  holds  him  like  adamant:  "Although  the 
fig-tree  shall  not  blossom,  neither  shall  fruit  be  in 
the  vines;  the  labor  of  the  olive  shall  fail,  and  the 
fields  shall  yield  no  meat;  the  flock  shall  be  cut 
off  from  the  fold  and  there  shall  be  no  herd  in  the 
stalls:  Yet  I  will  rejoice  in  the  Lord,  I  will  joy  in 
the  God  of  my  salvation.  ...  He  will  make  me 
to  walk  upon  mine  high  places."    Faith  like  that  is 
always  contagious.    The  unshaken  soul  kindles  an- 
other soul  who  believes  in  his  belief,  and  the  torch 
goes  from  this  man   on  his  watch-tower  to   St. 
Paul,  and  from  him  on  to  the  great  reformer,  and 
then  to  an  unnamed  multitude,  who  through  their 
soul's    insight    can    stand    everything    that    may 
happen! 


46     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

III 

LIVING  IN  THE  PRESENCE  OF  THE  ETERNAL 

Some  time  ago  I  received  a  letter  from  a  young 
minister  who  was  about  to  settle  for  religious 
work  in  a  large  manufacturing  town.  He  and  I 
were  strangers  to  each  other  in  the  flesh  but 
friends  through  correspondence,  and  because  we 
were  kindred  spirits  he  wrote  to  me  to  say:  "  I 
have  before  me  the  great  work  of  living  in  the 
eternal  God  and  in  a  humanity  toiling  in  factories 
and  shops.  Oh,  if  I  could  only  make  the  pres- 
ence of  the  Eternal  real  to  myself  and  to  my 
people !  "  Another  minister,  laboring  in  a  large 
suburb  of  New  York  City,  also  a  stranger  to  me 
except  through  correspondence,  wrote  to  say  that 
he  was  glad  for  every  voice  which  holds  up  before 
men  the  reality  of  the  invisible  Church  and  the 
idea  of  the  universal  priesthood  of  believers. 
These  letters  coming  within  a  week — and  they 
are  samples  of  many  similar  ones  —  are  signs 
of  the  times,  and  show  clearly  that  thoughtful 
men  all  about  us  are  done  with  the  husk  of  re- 
ligion and  are  devoting  themselves  to  the  heart  of 
the  matter.  There  is  a  deep  movement  under 
way  which  touches  all  denominations  and  is  stead- 


THE  POWER  THAT  WORKETH  IN  US      47 

ily  preparing  in  our  busy,  hurrying,  materialistic 
America  a  true  seed  of  the  vital,  spiritual  religion 
that  will  later  bear  rich  blossoms  and  ripe  har- 
vest. 

I  want  for  the  moment  to  return  to  the  central 
desire  of  the  young  minister,  in  the  hope  that  it 
may  inspire  some  of  us,  especially  some  of  our 
young  ministers  who  are  facing  their  new  spiritual 
tasks:  "  I  have  before  me  the  great  work  of  liv- 
ing in  the  eternal  God  and  in  a  humanity  toiling 
in  factories  and  shops.  Oh,  if  I  could  only  make 
the  presence  of  the  Eternal  real  to  myself  and  to 
them!" 

It  is  perhaps  a  new  idea  to  some  that  living 
in  the  eternal  God  is  "  work."  We  are  so  accus- 
tomed to  the  idea  that  all  that  is  required  of  us 
is  a  passive  mind  and  a  waiting  spirit  that  we 
have  never  quite  realized  this  truth:  No  person 
can  live  in  the  eternal  God  unless  he  is  ready  for 
the  most  intense  activity  and  for  the  most  strenu- 
ous life.  Gladstone,  in  his  old  age,  surprised  his 
readers  with  his  impressive  phrase,  "  the  work  of 
worship."  The  fact  is,  no  man  ever  yet  found 
his  way  into  the  permanent  enjoyment  of  God 
along  paths  of  least  resistance  or  by  any  lazy 
methods.  How  many  of  us  have  been  humiliated 
to  discover,  in  the  silence  or  in  the  service,  that 


48     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

nothing  spiritual  was  happening  within  us.  Our 
mind,  unbent  and  passive  enough,  was  like  a  stag- 
nant pool,  or,  if  not  stagnant,  was  darting  its  feel- 
ers out  and  following  in  lazy  fashion  any  line  of 
suggestion  which  pulled  it.  Instead  of  finding  our- 
selves "  living  in  the  eternal  God  "  and  in  the  high 
enjoyment  of  him,  we  catch  ourselves  wondering 
what  the  next  strike  will  be,  or  thinking  about  the 
mean  and  shabby  way  some  one  spoke  to  us  an 
hour  ago!  There  is  no  use  blaming  a  mind  be- 
cause it  wanders  —  everybody's  mind  wanders  — 
but  the  real  achievement  is  to  make  it  wander  in 
a  region  which  ministers  to  our  spiritual  life;  and 
that  can  be  done  only  by  getting  supremely  in- 
terested in  the  things  of  the  Spirit.  That  is  where 
the  "work"  lies;  that  is  where  the  effort  comes 
in.  Attention  is  always  determined  by  the  funda- 
mental interest.  What  we  love  supremely  we  at- 
tend to.  It  gets  us,  it  holds  us.  One  of  the  collo- 
quial phrases  for  being  in  love  with  a  person  is 
"  paying  attention  to  "  the  person.  It  is  a  true 
phrase  and  goes  straight  to  reality.  If  we  are  to 
discover  and  enjoy  the  eternal  Presence  we  must 
become  passionately  earnest  in  spirit  and  glowing 
with  love  for  the  Highest. 

My   friend   brings    two    important    things    to- 
gether: He  proposes  to  undertake  the  work  of 


THE  POWER  THAT  WORKETH  IN  US      49 

living  in  the  eternal  God  and  in  toiling  humanity. 
The  two  things  go  together  and  cannot  be  safely 
separated.      It   is   in   the   actual   sharing  of  life 
through  love  and  sympathy  and  sacrifice,  in  going 
out  of  self  to  feel  the  problems  and  difficulties  and 
sufferings  of  others,  that  we  find  and  form  a  life 
rich  in  higher  interests  and  centered  on  matters  of 
eternal  value.     A  man  who  has  traveled  through 
the  deeps  of  life  with  a  fellow  man  comes  to  his 
hour  of  worship  with  a  mind  focused  on  the  Eter- 
nal   and    with    a    spirit    girded    for    the    inward 
wrestling,  without  which  blessings  of  the  greater 
sort  do  not  come.     And  every  time  such  a  man 
finds  himself  truly  at  home  in  the  eternal  God 
and  fed  from  within,   he  can  go   out,  with  the 
strength  of  ten,  to  the  tasks  of  toiling  humanity. 
This  is  one  of  those  spiritual  circles  which  work 
both  ways:  He  that  dwells  itf  God  loves,    and 
he  that  loves  finds  God,  St.  John  tells  us. 

It  is  fine  to  see  a  strong  man,  trained  in  all  his 
faculties,  going  to  his  work  with  the  quiet  prayer: 
"  Oh,  that  I  may  make  the  presence  of  the  Eternal 
real  to  myself  and  to  my  people."  It  is  a  good 
prayer  for  all  of  us. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  WAY  OF  VISION 


DAYS  OF  GREATER  VISIBILITY 

From  the  porch  of  my  little  summer  cottage  in 
Maine  I  can  see,  across  the  beautiful  stretch  of 
lake  in  the  foreground,  the  far-distant  Kennebago 
Mountains  in  their  veil  of  purple.  But  we  see 
them  only  when  all  the  conditions  of  sky  and  air 
are  absolutely  right.  Most  of  the  time  they  are 
wrapped  in  clouds  or  are  lost  in  a  dim  haze.  Our 
visitors  admire  the  lake,  are  charmed  with  the 
islands,  the  picturesque  shore  and  the  surround- 
ing hills,  but  they  do  not  suspect  the  existence  of 
this  added  glory  beyond  the  hills.  We  often  tell 
them  of  the  mountains  "  just  over  there, "  which 
come  out  into  full  view  when  the  sky  clears  all 
the  way  to  the  horizon  and  the  wind  blows  fine 
from  the  northwest.  They  make  a  casual  re- 
mark about  the  sufficiency  of  what  is  already  in 
sight,  and  go  their  way  in  satisfied  ignorance  of 
the  "  beyond." 

50 


THE  WAY  OF  VISION  51 

Next     day,     perhaps  —  Oh     wonder  1      The 
morning  dawns  with  all  the  conditions  favorable 
for  our  distant  view.     The  air  is  altogether  right 
for  far  visibility.     The  clouds   are  swept  clean 
from  the  western  rim,  the  blue  is  utterly  trans- 
parent —  and  there  are  the  mountains  1    We  wish 
our  skeptical  visitors  could  be  with  us  now.     We 
guess  that  they  would  not  easily  talk  of  the  suffi- 
ciency of  the  near  beauty,  if  they  could  once  see 
the   overtopping  glory  of  these  mountains  now 
fully  unveiled  and  revealed.     Something  like  that, 
I  feel  sure,  is  true  of  God  and  of  other  great 
spiritual  realities  which  are  linked  with  his  being. 
Most  of  the  time  we  get  on  with  the  things  that 
are  near  at  hand;  the  things  we  see  and  handle 
and  are  sure  of.     The  world  is  full  of  utility  and 
we  do  well  to  appreciate  what  is  there  waiting  to 
be  used.     There  is  always  something  satisfying 
about  beauty,  and  nature  is  very  rich  and  lavish 
with  it.     Friendship  and  love  are  heavenly  gifts, 
and  when  these  are  added  to  the  other  good  things 
which  the  world  gives  us,  it  would  seem,  and  it 
does  seem,  to  many  that  we  ought  to  be  satisfied 
and  not  be  homesick  for  the  glory  which  lies  be- 
yond the  horizon-line  of  the  senses.    I  cannot  help 
it;  my  soul  will  not  stay  satisfied  with  this  near-at- 
hand  supply.     A  discontent  sweeps  over  me,  an 


52     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

uncontrollable  Heimweh  —  homesickness  of  soul 
—  surges  up  within  me  and  I  should  be  compelled 
to  call  the  whole  scheme  miserable  failure,  if  the 
near,  visible  skyline  were  the  real  boundary  of  all 
that  is. 

Sometimes  —  Oh  joy!  When  the  inward 
weather  is  just  right;  when  selfish  impulse  has  been 
hushed;  when  the  clouds  and  shadows,  which  sin 
makes,  are  swept  away  and  genuine  love  makes 
the  whole  inner  atmosphere  pure  and  free  from 
haze,  then  I  know  that  I  find  a  beyond  which  be- 
fore was  nowhere  in  sight  and  might  easily  not 
have  been  suspected.  I  cannot  decide  whether 
this  extended  range  of  sight  is  due  to  alterations 
in  myself,  or  whether  it  is  due  to  some  sudden 
increase  of  spiritual  visibility  in  the  great  reality 
itself.  I  only  know  the  fact.  Before,  I  was  oc- 
cupied with  things;  now,  I  commune  with  God  and 
am  as  sure  of  him  as  I  am  of  the  mountains  be- 
yond my  lake,  which  my  skeptical  visitor  has  not 
yet  seen. 

There  can  be  no  adequate  world  here  for  us 
without  at  least  a  faith  in  the  reality  beyond  the 
line  of  what  we  see  with  our  common  eyes.  We 
have  times  when  we  cannot  live  by  bread  alone, 
or  by  our  increase  of  stocks;  when  we  lose  our 
interest  in  cosmic  forces  and  need  something  more 


THE  WAY  OF  VISION  53 

than  the  slow  justice  which  history  weighs  out  on 
its  great  judgment  days.  We  want  to  feel  a  real 
heart  beating  somewhere  through  things;  we  want 
to  discover  through  the  maze  a  loving  will  work- 
ing out  a  purpose;  we  want  to  know  that  our 
costly  loyalties,  our  high  endeavors,  and  our  sacri- 
fices which  make  the  quivering  flesh  palpitate  with 
pain,  really  matter  to  Someone  and  fill  up  what  is 
behind  of  his  great  suffering  for  love's  sake.  We 
can  not  get  on  here  with  substitutes;  we  must  have 
the  reality  itself.  Religion  is  an  awful  farce  if 
it  is  only  a  play-scheme,  a  cinematograph-show, 
which  makes  one  believe  he  is  seeing  reality  when 
he  is,  in  fact,  being  fooled  with  a  picture.  We 
must  at  all  costs  insist  on  the  real  things.  It  is 
God  we  want  and  not  another,  the  real  Face  and 
not  a  picture. 

"  We  needs  must  love  the  highest  when  we  see  it ; 
Not  Lancelot  nor  another." 

He  is  surely  there  to  be  seen,  like  my  mountain. 
Days  may  pass  when  we  only  hope  and  long  and 
guess.  Then  the  weather  comes  right,  the  veil 
thins  away  and  we  see !  It  is,  however,  not  a  rare 
privilege  reserved  for  a  tiny  few.  It  is  not  a 
grudged  miracle,  granted  only  to  saints  who  have 


54    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

killed  out  all  self.  It  belongs  to  the  very  nature 
of  the  soul  to  see  God.  It  is  what  makes  life 
really  life.  It  is  as  normal  a  function  as  breath- 
ing or  digestion.  Only  one  must,  of  all  things, 
intend  to  do  it! 

II 

THE  PROPHET  AND  HIS  TRAGEDIES 

There  will  always  be  in  the  world  a  vast  num- 
ber of  persons  who  take  the  most  comfortable 
form  of  religion  which  their  generation  affords. 
They  are  not  path-breakers;  they  have  nothing  in 
their  nature  which  pushes  them  into  the  fields  of 
discovery  —  they  are  satisfied  with  the  religion 
which  has  come  down  to  them  from  the  past. 
They  accept  what  others  have  won  and  tested, 
and  are  thankful  that  they  are  saved  the  struggle 
and  the  fire  which  are  involved  in  first-hand  ex- 
perience and  in  fresh  discovery. 

The  prophet,  on  the  contrary,  in  whatever  age 
he  comes,  can  never  take  this  easy  course.  He 
cannot  rest  contented  with  the  forms  of  religion 
which  are  accepted  by  others.  He  cannot  enjoy 
the  comforts  of  the  calm  and  settled  faith  which 
those  around  him  inherit  and  adopt.     His  soul 


THE  WAY  OF  VISION  55 

forever  hears  the  divine  call  to  leave  the  old 
mountain  and  go  forward,  to  conquer  new  fields, 
to  fight  new  battles,  to  restate  his  faith  in  words 
that  are  fresh  and  vital,  in  terms  of  the  deepest 
life  of  his  time.  We  used  to  think  —  many  people 
still  think  —  that  a  prophet  is  a  foreteller  of  fu- 
ture events,  a  kind  of  magical  and  miraculous  per- 
son who  speaks  as  an  oracle  and  who  announces, 
without  knowing  how  or  why,  far-off,  coming  oc- 
currences that  are  communicated  to  him.  To 
think  thus  is  to  miss  the  deeper  truth  of  the 
prophet's  mission.  He  is  primarily  a  religious 
patriot,  a  statesman  with  a  moral  and  spiritual 
policy  for  the  nation.  He  is  a  person  who  sees 
what  is  involved  in  the  eternal  nature  of  things 
and  therefore  what  the  outcome  of  a  course  of 
life  is  bound  to  be.  He  possesses  an  unerring  eye 
for  curves  of  righteousness  or  unrighteousness,  as 
the  great  artist  has  for  lines  of  beauty  and  har- 
mony, or  as  the  great  mathematician  has  for  the 
completing  lines  of  a  curve,  involved  in  any  given 
arc  of  it.  He  is  different  from  others,  not  in  the 
fact  that  he  has  ecstasies  and  lives  in  the  realm 
of  miracles,  but  rather  that  he  has  a  clearer  con- 
viction of  God  than  most  men  have.  He  has 
found  him  as  the  center  of  all  reality.  He  reads 
and  interprets  all  history  in  the  light  of  the  in- 


56    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

dubitable  fact  of  God,  and  he  estimates  life  and 
deeds  in  terms  of  moral  and  spiritual  laws,  which 
are  as  inflexible  as  the  laws  of  chemical  atoms  or 
of  electrical  forces.  He  looks  for  no  capricious 
results.  He  sees  that  this  is  a  universe  of  moral 
and  spiritual  order. 

If  he  is  an  Amos,  he  will  refuse  to  fall  in  line 
with  the  easy  worshipers  of  his  age,  who  are 
satisfied  with  the  old-time  religion  of  "  burnt  of- 
ferings "  and  "  meat  offerings  "  and  "  peace  of- 
ferings of  fat  beasts."  His  soul  will  cry  out  for 
a  religion  which  makes  a  new  moral  and  spiritual 
man,  "  makes  righteousness  run  down  as  a  mighty 
stream,"  and  sets  the  worshiper  into  new  social 
relations  with  his  fellows.  If  he  is  an  Isaiah,  he 
will  refuse  "  to  tramp  the  temple  "  with  the  mass 
of  easy  worshipers;  he  will  have  his  own  vision 
of  "  the  Lord  high  and  lifted  up,"  with  his  glory 
filling  not  only  the  temple  but  the  whole  earth, 
and  he  will  dedicate  himself  to  the  task  of  prepar- 
ing a  holy  people  and  a  holy  city  for  this  God  who 
has  been  revealed  to  him  as  a  thrice-holy  God. 
If  he  is  a  Jeremiah,  he  will  not  accept  the  view 
that  the  traditional  religion  of  Jerusalem  is  ade- 
quate for  the  crisis  of  the  times.  He  will  insist 
that  true  religion  must  be  inwardly  experienced; 
that  the  law  of  God  must  be  written  in  the  heart, 


THE  WAY  OF  VISION  57 

and  that  the  life  of  a  man  must  be  the  living  fruit 
of  his  faith.  He  will  cry  out  against  the  idea 
that  the  moral  wounds  and  spiritual  sores  of  the 
daughter  of  Jerusalem  can  be  healed  with  easy- 
salves  and  cheap  panaceas. 

The  supreme  example  of  this  refusal  to  go 
along  the  easy  line  of  contemporary  religion  is 
that  of  One  who  was  more  than  a  prophet.  His 
people  prided  themselves  on  being  the  chosen 
people  of  the  Lord.  The  scribal  leaders  had  suc- 
ceeded in  drawing  up  a  complete  and  perfect  cata- 
logue of  religious  performances.  They  supplied 
minute  directions  for  one's  religious  duty  in  every 
detail,  real  or  imaginary,  of  daily  life,  and  the 
world  has  never  seen  a  more  elaborate  form  of 
religion  than  this  of  the  Pharisees.  But  Christ 
refused  to  follow  the  path  of  custom;  he  could 
not  and  he  would  not  do  the  things  which  the 
scribes  prescribed.  He  broke  a  new  path  for  the 
soul,  and  called  men  away  from  legalism  and  the 
dead  routine  of  "  performances  "  to  a  life  of  in- 
dividual faith  and  service,  which  involves  suffer- 
ing and  self-sacrifice,  but  which  brings  the  soul 
into  personal  relation  with  the  living  God. 

St.  Paul,  a  Pharisee  of  the  Pharisees,  a  rabbini- 
cal scholar  of  the  first  rank,  a  man  rising  stage 
by  stage  to  fame  along  the  path  marked  out  by  the 


58     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

traditions  of  his  people,  came  back  from  his  event- 
ful journey  to  Damascus  to  take  up  the  work  of  a 
path-breaker  and  to  set  himself  like  a  flint  against 
the  old-time  religion  in  which  he  was  born  and 
reared.  Luther,  a  devout  monk,  an  ambassador 
to  the  papal  court,  a  professor  of  scholastic  the- 
ology, discovered  that  he  could  not  find  peace 
to  his  soul  along  the  path  of  the  prevailing  tra- 
ditional religion,  and  he  swung,  with  all  the  fer- 
vor of  his  powerful  nature,  into  a  fresh  track 
which  has  blessed  all  ages  since.  These  are  some 
of  the  supreme  leaders,  but  every  age  has  had  its 
quota  of  minor  prophets,  who  have  heard  the  call 
to  leave  the  old  mountain  and  go  forward  and 
who  have  fearlessly  entered  the  perilous  and  un- 
tried path  of  fresh  vision.  As  we  look  back  and 
see  them  in  the  perspective  of  their  successful  mis- 
sion to  the  race,  we  thank  God  for  their  bravery 
and  their  valiant  service,  but  we  are  apt  to  forget 
the  tragedies  of  their  lives. 

Nobody  can  enter  a  fresh  path,  or  bring  a  new 
vision  of  the  meaning  of  life,  or  reinterpret  old 
truths  —  in  short,  nobody  can  be  a  prophet  — 
without  arousing  the  suspicion  and,  sooner  or 
later,  the  bitter  hatred  of  those  who  are  the  keep- 
ers and  guardians  of  the  existing  forms  and  tradi- 
tions, and  the  path-breaker  must  expect  to  see  his 


THE  WAY  OF  VISION  59 

old  friends  misunderstand  him,  turn  against  him, 
and  reproach  him.  He  must  endure  the  hard  ex- 
perience of  being  called  a  destroyer  of  the  very- 
things  he  is  giving  his  life  to  build.  Christ  is,  for 
example,  hurried  to  the  cross  as  a  blasphemer, 
and  each  prophet,  in  his  degree,  has  had  to  hear 
himself  charged  with  being  the  very  opposite  of 
what  he  really  is  in  heart  and  life.  To  be  a 
prophet  at  all  he  must  be  a  sensitive  soul,  and  yet 
he  must  live  and  work  in  a  pitiless  rain  of  mis- 
understanding and  attack.  Still  more  tragic,  per- 
haps, is  the  necessity  which  the  prophet  is  under 
of  doing  his  hard  tasks  without  living  to  see  the 
triumphant  results.  He  is,  naturally,  ahead  of  his 
time  —  a  path-breaker  —  and  his  contemporaries 
are  always  slow  to  discover  and  to  realize  what 
he  is  doing.  Even  those  who  love  him  and  appre- 
ciate him  only  half  see  his  true  purpose,  and  thus 
he  feels  alone  and  solitary,  though  he  may  be  in 
the  thick  of  the  throng.  It  is  only  when  he  is 
long  dead  and  the  mists  have  cleared  away  that  he 
is  called  a  prophet  and  comes  to  his  true  place. 
While  he  lived  he  was  sure  of  only  one  Friend 
who  completely  understood  him  and  approved  of 
his  course,  and  that  was  his  invisible  and  heavenly 
Friend.  But  in  spite  of  the  tragedy  and  the  pain 
and  the  hard  road,  the  prophet,  "  seeing  him  who 


60    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

is  invisible,"  prefers  to  all  other  paths,  however 
easy  and  popular,  the  path  of  his  vision  and  call. 


Ill 

A  LONG  DISTANCE  CALL 

Just  when  life  seems  peculiarly  crowded  with 
items  of  complexity  and  importance,  the  telephone 
rings  a  determined,  significant  kind  of  ring.  This 
is  evidently  no  ordinary  passing-the-time-of-day 
affair.  I  interrupt  my  weighty  concerns  and  take 
up  the  receiver  with  expectation.  I  say  "  Hello !  " 
but  there  is  no  answer,  no  human  recognition. 
The  wire  hums  and  buzzes,  instruments  click  far 
away,  plugs  are  pulled  out  and  pushed  in.  Little 
tiny  scraps  of  remote,  inane,  unintelligible  conver- 
sation between  unknown  mortals  furnish  the  only 
evidence  I  get  that  there  is  any  human  purpose 
going  forward  in  this  strange  world  inside  the 
telephone  system  where  I  can  see  nothing  happen- 
ing. 

Suddenly  a  voice  which  is  evidently  hunting  for 

me  breaks  in:   "  Is  this   Mr.  ?"      "Yes." 

"  Hold  the  wire,  please."  I  am  led  on  with  in- 
creasing interest  and  confidence.  Somebody  some- 
where miles  away  in  this  invisible  world  of  elec- 


THE  WAY  OF  VISION  61 

trical  connections  is  seeking  for  me.  I  forget  the 
multitudinous  problems  that  were  besieging  me 
when  the  telephone  first  rang,  and  I  listen  with 
suppressed  breath  and  strained  muscles.  All  I 
get,  however,  is  an  immense  confusion.  There  is 
no  coherence  or  order  to  anything  that  reaches 
me.  Faint  and  far  away  in  some  still  remoter 
center  than  at  first  I  hear  clicks  and  buzzes,  vague 
unmeaning  noises,  and  the  dull  thud  of  shifting 
plugs  that  connect  the  lines.  Once  more  a  kindly 
voice  breaks  in  on  the  confusion,  a  voice  seeking 
after  me  from  some  distant  city:  "  Is  this  Mr. 

?  "     "  Yes."     "Wait  a  minute." 

I  do  wait  a  minute  as  patiently  as  I  can.  I 
dimly  feel  that  we  are  plunging  out  into  yet  re- 
moter space,  and  that  I  am  being  connected  up 
with  the  person  who  all  the  time  has  been  seeking 
me.  A  low  hum  of  the  far-away  wire  is  all  I 
get  to  repay  me  for  the  long  wait.  I  grow  impa- 
tient. I  shout  "  Hello !  "  "  Is  anybody  there?  " 
"  Do  you  want  me?  "  Not  a  word  comes  back, 
only  endless,  empty  murmurs  of  people  who  have 
found  one  another  and  are  talking  so  far  off  that 
the  sense  is  lost  in  the  mere  broth  of  sounds. 
This  dull  world  inside  the  telephone  seems  to  be 
a  mad  world  of  noise  and  confusion  but  no  sub- 
stance, no   real  correspondence.     I   am  on  the 


62    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

verge  of  giving  the  whole  business  up  and  of  re- 
turning to  my  interrupted  tasks,  which  at  least 
were  rational. 

Suddenly  a  voice  breaks  in,  this  time  a  voice  I 
know  and  recognize.  The  person  who  had  been 
seeking  me  all  the  time,  across  these  spaces  and 
over  this  network  of  interlaced  wires,  calls  me  by 
name,  speaks  words  of  insight  and  intelligence, 
and  gives  me  a  message  which  moves  me  deeply 
and  raises  the  whole  tone  of  my  spirit.  When 
finally  I  "  hang  up  "  and  return  to  the  things  in 
hand,  I  have  renewed  my  strength  and  can  work 
with  clearer  head  and  faster  pace.  The  pause  has 
been  like  a  pause  in  a  piece  of  music.  It  has  been 
full  of  significance,  and  it  has  helped  toward  a 
higher  level. 

Something  like  this  telephone  experience  hap- 
pens in  another  and  very  different  sphere  —  a 
sphere  where  there  are  no  wires.  In  the  hush  and 
silence,  when  the  conditions  are  right  for  it,  it 
often  seems  as  though  some  one  were  trying  to 
communicate  with  us,  seeking  for  actual  corre- 
spondence with  us.  We  turn  from  the  din  and 
turmoil  of  busy  efforts  and  listen  for  the  voice. 
We  listen  intently  and  we  hear  —  our  own  heart 
beating.  We  feel  the  strain  of  our  muscles  across 
the  chest.     We  push  back  a  little  deeper  and  try 


THE  WAY  OF  VISION  63 

again.     We  feel  the  tension  of  the  skin  over  the 
forehead  and  we  note   that  we   are  pulling  the 
eyeballs   up   and  inward   for  more   concentrated 
meditation.      All   the    muscles    of   the   scalp    are 
drawn  and  we  notice  them  perhaps  for  the  first 
time.     Strange  little  bits  of  thought  flit  across  the 
threshold  of  the  mind.     We  catch  glimpses  of 
dim  ideas  knocking  at  the  windows  for  admission 
to  the  inner  domain  where  we  live.     Then,   all 
of  a  sudden,  we  succeed  in  pushing  further  back. 
We  forget  our  strained  muscles  and  are  uncon- 
scious of  the  corporeal  bulk  of  ourselves.     We 
get  in  past  the  flitting  thoughts  and  the  proces- 
sion of  ideas  contending  for  entrance.     The  track 
seems  open  for  the  Someone  who  is  seeking  us 
no  less  certainly  than  we  are  seeking  him.    If  we 
do  not  hear  our  name  called,   and  do  not  hear 
distinctly  a  message  in  well-known  words,  we  do 
at  least  feel  that  we  have  found  a  real  Presence 
and  have  received  fresh  vital  energy  from  the 
creative  center  of  life  itself,  so  that  we  come  back 
to  action,   after  our  pause,   restored,   refreshed, 
and  "  charged  "  with  new  force  to  live  by. 

Some  time  ago  a  long  distance  call  came  to  my 
telephone  and  I  wTent  through  all  the  stages  of 
waiting  and  of  confusion  and  finally  heard  the 
clear  voice  calling  me,  but  I  could  not  get  any 


64    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

answer  back.  I  heard  perfectly  across  the  five 
hundred  intervening  miles,  but  my  correspondent 
never  got  a  single  clear  word  from  me.  We 
found  that  something  was  wrong  with  our  trans- 
mitter. The  connection  was  good,  the  line  was 
pervious,  the  seeking  voice  was  at  the  other  end, 
but  I  did  not  succeed  in  transmitting  what  ought 
to  have  been  said.  Here  is  where  most  of  us  fail 
in  this  other  sphere  —  this  inner  wireless  sphere 
—  we  are  poor  transmitters.  We  make  the  con- 
nection, we  receive  the  gift  of  grace,  we  are 
flooded  with  the  incomes  of  life  and  power  and 
we  freely  take,  but  we  do  not  give.  We  absorb 
and  accumulate  what  we  can,  but  we  transmit 
little  of  all  that  comes  to  us.  Our  radius  of  out- 
giving influence  is  far  too  small.  We  need,  on 
the  one  hand,  to  listen  deeper,  to  get  further  in 
beyond  the  tensions  and  the  noises,  but  on  the 
other  hand  we  need  to  be  more  radio-active,  bet- 
ter transmitters  of  the  grace  of  God. 


CHAPTER  V 
THE  WAY  OF  PERSONALITY 


ANOTHER   KIND   OF    HERO 

A  generation  ago  almost  everybody  read,  at 
least  once,  Carlyle's  great  book  on  heroes.  He 
gave  us  the  hero  as  prophet,  as  priest,  as  poet,  as 
king,  and  he  made  us  realize  that  these  heroes 
have  been  the  real  makers  of  human  society.  I 
should  like  to  add  a  chapter  on  another  kind  of 
hero,  who  has,  perhaps,  not  done  much  to  build 
cities  and  states  and  church  systems,  but  who  has, 
almost  more  than  anybody  else,  shown  us  the 
spiritual  value  of  endurance  —  I  mean  the  hero  as 
invalid. 

It  is  the  hardest  kind  of  heroism  there  is  to 
achieve.  Most  of  us  know  some  man  —  too  often 
it  is  oneself  —  who  is  a  very  fair  Christian  when 
he  is  in  normal  health  and  absorbed  in  interesting 
work,  who  carries  a  smooth  forehead  and  easily 
drops  into  a  good-natured  smile,  but  who  becomes 
"  blue  "  and  irritable  and  a  storm  center  in  the 

65 


66     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

family  weather  as  soon  as  the  bodily  apparatus 
is  thrown  out  of  gear.  Most  of  us  have  had  a 
taste  of  humiliation  as  we  have  witnessed  our 
own  defeat  in  the  presence  of  some  thorn  in  the 
flesh,  which  stubbornly  pricked  us,  even  though 
we  prayed  to  have  it  removed  and  urged  the  doc- 
tor to  hurry  up  and  remove  it. 

What  a  hero,  then,  must  he  be,  who,  with  a 
weak  and  broken  body,  a  prey  to  pain  and  doomed 
to  die  daily,  learns  how  to  live  in  calm  faith  that 
God  is  good  and  makes  his  life  a  center  of  cheer 
and  sunshine !  The  heroism  of  the  battlefield  and 
the  man-of-war  looks  cheap  and  thin  compared 
with  this.  We  could  all  rally  to  meet  some  glo- 
rious moment  when  a  trusted  leader  shouted  to  us, 
"  Your  country  expects  you  to  do  your  duty!" 
But  to  drag  on  through  days  and  nights,  through 
weeks  and  months,  through  recurring  birthdays, 
with  vital  energy  low,  with  sluggish  appetite,  with 
none  of  that  ground-swell  of  superfluous  vigor 
which  makes  healthy  life  so  good,  and  still  to 
prove  that  life  is  good  and  to  radiate  joy  and 
triumph  —  that  is  the  very  flower  and  perfume  of 
heroism.  If  we  are  making  up  a  bead-roll  of 
heroes,  let  us  put  at  the  top  the  names  of  those 
quiet  friends  of  ours  who  have  played  the  man 
or  revealed  the  woman  through  hard  periods  of 


THE  WAY  OF  PERSONALITY  67 

invalidism  and  have  exhibited  to  us  the  fine  glory 
of  a  courageous  spirit. 

One  of  the  hardest  and  most  difficult  features 
to  bear  is  the  inability  to  work  at  one's  former 
pace  and  with  the  old-time  constructive  power. 
The  prayer  of  the  Psalmist  that  his  work,  the  con- 
tribution of  his  life,  might  be  preserved  is  very 
touching:  "  Establish  thou  the  work  of  our  hands 
upon  us,  yea,  the  work  of  our  hands  establish 
thou  it."  What  can  be  more  tragic  than  the  cry 
of  Othello:  "  My  occupation  is  gone!"  So  long 
as  the  hand  keeps  its  cunning  and  the  mind  re- 
mains clear  and  creative,  one  can  stand  physical 
handicap  and  pain,  but  when  the  working  power 
of  mind  or  body  is  threatened,  then  the  test  of 
faith  and  heroism  indeed  arrives. 

A  man  whose  life  meant  much  to  me  and  whose 
intimacy  was  very  precious  to  me  made  me  see 
many  years  ago  how  wonderfully  this  test  could 
be  met.  He  was  a  great  teacher,  the  head  of  a 
distinguished  boys'  school.  He  was  experiencing 
the  full  measure  of  success,  and  his  influence  over 
his  boys  was  extraordinary.  He  realized,  as  his 
work  went  on,  that  his  hearing  was  becoming  dull 
and  was  steadily  failing.  He  went  to  New  York 
and  consulted  a  famous  specialist.  After  making 
a  careful  examination  the  specialist  said,  with  per- 


68    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

feet  frankness:  "  Your  case  is  hopeless.  Nothing 
can  be  done  to  check  the  disaster.  You  are  hard 
of  hearing  already,  but  in  a  very  short  time  you 
will  have  no  hearing  at  all."  Without  a  quaver 
the  teacher  said:  "  Don't  you  think,  doctor,  that 
I  shall  hear  Gabriel's  trumpet  when  it  blows!" 
He  went  back  to  his  school,  learned  to  read  lips, 
reorganized  his  life,  accepted  without  a  murmur 
his  loss  of  a  major  sense,  and  finished  his  splendid 
career  of  work  in  an  undefeated  spirit  and  with  a 
grace  and  joy  which  were  envied  by  many  persons 
in  possession  of  all  their  powers. 

All  my  readers  will  think  of  some  "  star 
player  "  in  this  hard  game  of  patience  and  endu- 
rance, and  will  have  watched  with  awe  and  rever- 
ence the  glorious  fight  of  some  of  those  unre- 
corded heroes  who  won  but  got  no  valor  medal. 
The  only  person  who  ranks  higher  in  the  scale 
of  heroism  than  the  hero  as  invalid  is  possibly  the 
person  who  patiently,  lovingly  nurses  and  cares 
for  some  invalid  through  years  of  decline  and  suf- 
fering. Generally,  though  not  always,  it  is  a 
woman.  Not  seldom  she  is  called  upon  to  con- 
secrate her  life  to  the  task,  and  often  she  gives 
what  is  much  more  precious  than  life  itself.  We 
build  no  monuments  to  daughters  who  unmur- 
muringly  forego  the  joy  of  married  life,  who  re- 


THE  WAY  OF  PERSONALITY  69 

fuse  the  suit  of  love  in  order  to  be  free  to  ease 
the  closing  years  of  father  or  mother,  grown  help- 
less; but  where  is  there  higher  consecration  or 
finer  heroism?  Men  sometimes  complain  that  the 
days  of  chivalry  and  heroism  are  past.  On  the 
contrary,  they  are  more  truly  dawning.  As  Chris- 
tianity ripens  love  grows  richer  and  deeper,  and 
where  love  appears  heroism  is  always  close  at 
hand.  Our  best  heroes  are  mothers  and  wives 
and  daughters,  fathers  and  husbands  and  sons. 


II 

THE   BETTER   POSSESSION 

During  one  of  the  intense  persecutions  by  which 
an  early  Roman  emperor  harried  the  Christians 
of  the  first  century,  some  unknown  writer  (Har- 
nack  thinks  it  was  a  woman)  wrote  an  extraordi- 
nary little  book  to  hearten  those  who  were  under- 
going the  trial  of  their  faith.  I  mean,  of  course, 
the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews.  It  is  marked  by  rare 
genius  and  by  undoubted  inspiration.  It  is  full  of 
vital  messages  and  it  contains  passages  of  great 
power.  Just  before  the  most  loved  section  of  the 
little  book  —  the  account  of  the  faith-heroes  — 
the  author,   in  a  passage   open  to   a   variety  of 


70    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

translations,  refers  to  the  fact  that  those  to  whom 
he  is  writing  have  suffered,  and  have  suffered 
joyfully,  the  spoiling  of  their  possessions,  "  know- 
ing," he  says,  "that  you  have  your  own  selves  for 
a  better  possession  "  — you  yourselves  are  a  bet- 
ter possession  than  any  of  those  goods  which  you 
have  lost  for  your  faith. 

I  wonder  if  the  readers  fully  realized  the  truth, 
or  if  we  should  to-day  realize  it  had  we  suffered 
a  similar  stripping.  We  are  very  slow  to  take 
account  of  that  type  of  stock.  We  are  very  keen 
about  our  own  assets,  but  we  often  fail  to  prize 
this  supreme  ownership,  the  possession  of  our- 
selves. There  is  a  story,  both  sad  and  amusing, 
of  an  insane  man  who  was  seen  wildly  rushing 
about  the  house,  from  room  to  room,  looking  in 
cupboards  and  clothes-presses,  crawling  under 
beds,  obviously  searching  for  something.  When 
questioned  as  to  what  he  was  so  frantically  look- 
ing for,  he  replied,  "  I  am  trying  to  find  my 
self!  "  It  is  not  as  mad  as  it  seems.  I  am  not 
sure  but  that  we  who  are  not  trying  to  find  our- 
selves are  after  all  more  crazy  still. 

Old  Burton,  who  wrote  The  Anatomy  of  Mel- 
ancholy, well  said : 

"  Men  look  to  their  tools ;  a  painter  will  wash  his 
pencils;   a  smith  will   look   to   his  hammer,   anvil,   and 


THE  WAY  OF  PERSONALITY  71 

forge;  a  husbandman  will  mend  his  plow-irons  and  grind 
his  hatchet,  if  it  be  dull;  a  musician  will  string  and  un- 
string his  lute;  only  scholars  neglect  that  instrument, 
their  brains  and  spirits  I  mean,  which  they  daily  use." 

Not  scholars  only,  but  all  classes  and  conditions 
of  men  are  guilty  of  this  strange  insanity.  If  the 
Duke  of  Westminster  should  offer  to  transfer  to 
us  his  estates,  we  would  rush  with  all  conceivable 
speed  to  acquire  our  new  potential  possessions. 
We  would  go  as  with  wings  of  an  aeroplane  to  get 
the  transaction  accomplished  before  anything 
could  occur  to  keep  us  from  entering  into  our 
fortune.  But  here  we  are  already  within  reach 
of  a  vastly  better  possession,  of  which  we  are 
strangely  negligent.  If  it  came  to  a  choice  be- 
tween himself  and  his  outward  possessions,  this 
duke  who  owns  so  much  would  not  hesitate  a  min- 
ute which  to  prefer.  If  in  a  crisis  of  illness  he 
could  save  himself  by  surrender  of  his  goods,  they 
would  instantly  go.  "  Give  me  health  and  a  day," 
Emerson  said,  "  and  I  will  make  the  pomp  of 
emperors  ridiculous." 

What  we  would  do  in  a  crisis  we  often  fail  to 
do  when  no  crisis  confronts  us,  and  it  is  a  fact 
that  too  often  we  miss  and  even  squander  that 
better  possession,  ourselves.  The  best  way  to  win 
it  and  enjoy  it  is  to  cultivate  those  inner  experi- 


72    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

ences  and  endowments  which  make  us  independent 
of  external  fortune.     All  Christ's  beatitudes  at- 
tach to  some  inherent  quality  of  life  itself.    The 
meek,  the  merciful,  the  pure,  are  "  happy,"  not 
because    the    external   world   conforms    to    their 
wishes,  but  because  they  have  resources  of  life 
within  themselves  and  have  entered  upon  a  way 
of  life  which  continually  opens  out  into  more  life 
and   richer  life.      They  have    found   a   kind   of 
Canaan  that  "  comes  "  in  continuous  instalments. 
One  of  the  simplest  ways  to  heighten  the  total 
value  of  life  is  to  form  a  habit  of  appreciating 
the  world  we  have  here  and  now.     It  presents 
occasional  inconveniences,  no  doubt,  but  think  of 
the  amazing  donations  which  come  to  us :  the  tilt- 
ing of  the  earth's  axis  twenty-three  and  a  half  de- 
grees to  the  ecliptic  by  which  contrivance  we  have 
our  seasons;  the  fact  that  the  proportion  of  earth 
and  water  is  just  right  to  give  us  a  fine  balance  of 
rain  and  sunshine;  the  extraordinary  way  in  which 
the  entire  universe  submits  to  our  mathematics 
so  that  every  movement  of  matter  and  every  vi- 
bration of  ether  conforms  to  laws  which  we  for- 
mulate; the  accumulation  and  storage  of  fuel  and 
motor  power,  with  the  prospect  of  even  greater 
resources   of  energy  to  be  had   from  the  unoc- 
cupied space  surrounding  the  earth.    Then,  again, 


THE  WAY  OF  PERSONALITY  73 

it  cannot  be  a  matter  of  unconcern  that  there  is 
such  a  wealth  of  beauty  lavished  upon  us  every- 
where, waiting  for  us  to  enjoy  it.  There  is  here 
a  strange  fit  between  the  outer  and  the  inner. 
The  more  one  draws  upon  the  beauty  of  the  world 
and  enjoys  it,  so  much  the  more  does  he  increase 
his  capacity  to  discover  and  enjoy  beauty.  Coal 
and  oil  may  become  exhausted,  but  beauty  is  in- 
exhaustible. The  only  trouble  is  that  we  are  so 
limited  in  our  range  of  appreciation  of  it.  We 
turn  to  cheaper  values  and  miss  so  much  of  this 
free  gift  of  loveliness. 

Greater  still  should  be  our  resources  of  love 
and  friendship.  Nothing  could  be  stranger  or 
more  wonderful  than  that  in  a  world  where  strug- 
gle for  existence  is  the  law  this  other  trait  should 
have  emerged.  It  is  easy  to  explain  selfishness; 
love  is  the  mystery.  Love  forgets  itself;  it  scorns 
double-entry  bookkeeping;  it  gives,  it  bestows,  it 
shares,  it  sacrifices  without  asking  whether  any- 
thing is  coming  back.  And  it  turns  out  to  be  a 
fact  that  nothing  else  so  enhances  and  increases 
the  value  of  this  "  better  possession  which  is  our- 
selves." 

Even  more  wonderful,  if  that  is  possible,  is  the 
way  we  are  formed  and  contrived  to  have  in- 
tercourse with  the  Eternal.     With  all  our  ma- 


74    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

terial  furnishings  we  strangely  open  out  into  the 
infinite  and  partake  of  a  spiritual  nature.  God 
has  set  eternity  in  our  hearts.  We  cannot  win  this 
better  possession  nor  hold  it  permanently  unless 
we  exercise  these  spiritual  capacities,  which  ex- 
pand our  being  and  add  the  richest  qualities  of 
life.  "  Thou  hast  made  us  for  thyself,"  Augus- 
tine acknowledged  in  his  great  prayer  at  the  open- 
ing of  the  Confessions  and  "  we  are  restless  until 
we  find  thee  as  our  true  rest."  It  is  as  true  now 
as  in  the  fourth  century.  Barns  and  houses,  lands 
and  stocks,  mortgages  and  bonds,  do  not  consti- 
tute life  unless  one  learns  how  to  win  and  possess 
his  soul  and  to  keep  that  best  of  all  possessions 
— himself. 


Ill 

THE  GREATEST  RIVALRIES  OF  LIFE 

"  After  experience  had  taught  me  that  all 
things  which  are  encountered  in  human  life  are 
vain  and  futile.  ...  I  at  length  determined  to 
inquire  if  there  was  anything  which  was  a  true 
good."  Those  are  the  words  of  a  great  philoso- 
pher who  says  that  he  found  himself  "  led  by  the 
hand  up  to  the  highest  blessedness." 


THE  WAY  OF  PERSONALITY  75 

Not  everybody  finds  the  choice  of  ends  so  easy 
as  Spinoza  did;  not  all  of  us  are  carried  along 
into  sustained  and  unmistakable  blessedness.  Life 
is  full  of  rivalries  which  tend  to  divide  our  in- 
terest and  to  dissipate  our  attention.  We  wake 
up,  perhaps,  with  surprise  to  discover  that  we  are 
being  carried,  by  the  hand  or  by  the  hair,  straight 
away  from  "  the  highest  blessedness."  Not  sel- 
dom the  sternest  tragedies  of  human  life  are  oc- 
casioned by  success.  Failure  overtaking  one  in 
his  aim  will  often  shake  him  awake  and  make  him 
see  that  he  was  pursuing  an  end  in  sharp  rivalry 
with  his  highest  good.  But  success  often  dulls  the 
vision  for  other  issues  and  gives  one  the  specious 
confidence  that  he  is  on  the  right  track  and  "  all's 
well." 

Christ  has  a  vivid  parable  which  touches  upon 
the  rivalries  of  life.  It  is  the  story  of  a  great 
feast  to  which  many  guests  are  invited.  When 
the  critical  moment  for  the  dinner  comes  the  other 
rivalries  begin  to  operate.  One  man,  attracted 
by  his  possessions,  "  begs  off,"  to  use  the  graphic 
phrase  of  the  original.  Another,  occupied  with 
the  complex  interests  of  business  and  busy  with 
the  affairs  of  trade,  prays  to  be  excused.  A  third 
is  immersed  in  the  joys  and  responsibilities  of 
married  life  and  he  abruptly  dispatches  his  "re- 


76    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

grets."  It  was  not  that  they  were  unconcerned 
about  the  sumptuous  feast,  but  that  they  were 
carried  along  by  rival  interests. 

The  feast  in  this  parable  plainly  stands  for  the 
"  true  good,"  the  "  highest  blessedness  "  of  life. 
It  symbolizes  the  goal  and  crown  of  life,  the  full 
realization  of  our  best  human  possibilities,  the 
attainment  of  that  for  which  we  were  made  as- 
piring beings.  The  invitation  is  a  mark  of  amaz- 
ing grace  and  the  recipient  of  it  has  the  clearest 
evidence  that  the  feast  would  satisfy  him.  But 
there  are  the  other  things  with  their  rival  at- 
tractions! Possessions  and  business  and  domestic 
life  pull  us  in  a  contrary  direction.  We  send  our 
cards  of  regret  and  beg  off  from  the  great  feast. 

The  real  mistake  lies  in  treating  these  things  as 
rivals.  If  we  only  knew  it,  an  affirmative  response 
to  the  great  invitation  of  life  would  prepare  us 
for  all  the  other  things  and  would  heighten  the 
value  of  all  we  own,  of  all  we  do,  and  of  all  we 
love.  Salvation  is  not  some  remote  and  ghostly 
thing  that  has  to  do  with  another  world.  It  is 
the  infusion  of  new  life  and  power  into  all  the 
concerns  and  affairs  of  this  present  world  where 
we  are.  It  means,  as  Christ  said,  receiving  "  a 
hundredfold  now  in  this  time,  houses  and  breth- 
ren, and  sisters,  and  mothers,  and  children,  and 


THE  WAY  OF  PERSONALITY  11 

lands,  with  persecutions;  and  in  the  world  to  come 
eternal  life." 

Nothing  could  be  a  more  mistaken  way  than 
to  regard  human  love  as  a  rival  to  the  highest  of 
all  relations,  the  love  of  the  soul  for  God.     One 
of  the  medieval   saints   said:   "  God  brooks   no 
rival  " ;  but  that  phrase  shows  that  the  saint  was 
caught  napping,  and  in  any  case  did  not  quite  un- 
derstand what  love  is.    The  way  up  to  the  highest 
love  is  not  to  be  found  by  turning  away  from 
those    experiences    which    give    us    training    and 
preparation  for  the  highest;  but  rather  it  is  found 
in  and  through  the  experience  of  loving  some  per- 
son who,  however  imperfectly,  is  a  revelation  of 
the  beauty  and  divineness  of  love.     Not  by  some 
sheer  leap  from  the  earth  does  the  soul  arrive  at 
its  height  of  blessedness,  but  by  steps  and  stages, 
by  processes  which  bring  illumination  and  richness 
of  life.    The  man  who  has  married  a  wife  will  do 
well  to  say  when  he  answers  the  great  invitation : 
"  I  have  just  married  a  wife  and  therefore  I  am 
peculiarly  glad  to  come  to  thy  feast,  since  fellow- 
ship with  thee  will  make  my  love  more  real  and 
true  as  that  in  turn  will  enable  me  to  rise  to  a 
more  genuine  appreciation  of  thy  love." 

The  same  is  true  of  houses  and  lands,  of  busi- 
ness and  trade.     There  is  no  necessary  rivalry 


78     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

here.  Religion  does  not  rob  us  of  earthly  inter- 
ests, it  does  not  strip  us  of  the  good  things  of  this 
world.  It  only  corrects  our  perspective  and  en- 
ables us  to  see  the  true  scale  of  values.  The  triv- 
ial and  fragmentary  things  of  the  world  no  longer 
absorb  us.  We  refuse  now  to  allow  them  to  own 
us  and  drive  us,  or  drag  us.  We  see  things  stead- 
ily and  we  see  them  whole.  We  discover  through 
our  higher  contacts  and  inspirations  how  to  flood 
light  back  upon  our  occupations  and  upon  the 
things  we  own,  and  how  to  make  these  subordi- 
nate things  minister  to  the  higher  functions  and 
attitudes  of  life.  We  get  not  some  other  world, 
but  this  world  here  and  now  transmuted  and 
raised  a  little  nearer  to  the  ideal  and  perfect 
world  of  our  hopes  and  dreams.  We  get  it  back 
item  for  item  increased  a  hundredfold,  raised  to 
a  higher  spiritual  level.  The  wise  owner  of  prop- 
erty and  the  intelligent  man  of  affairs  will  not  beg 
off  when  the  great  invitation  comes  to  him.  He 
will  say:  "  I  have  just  come  into  possession  of  a 
piece  of  land,  I  have  bought  five  yoke  of  oxen, 
and  therefore  I  want  to  come  to  thy  divine  feast 
so  that  I  may  learn  how  to  turn  all  I  possess  into 
the  channels  of  real  service  and  to  make  these 
things  which  thou  hast  given  me  help  me  find  the 
way  to  the  highest  joy  and  blessedness  of  life." 


CHAPTER  VI 
AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION 


THE   CHURCH   OF  THE   LIVING  GOD 

We  have  all  been  asking,  "  What  is  the  matter 
with  the  Church?  Why  is  it  so  weak  and  inef- 
fective? Why  does  it  exercise  such  a  feeble  in- 
fluence in  the  world  to-day?  Why  do  men  care 
so  little  for  its  message  and  its  mission?  "  There 
are  no  doubt  many  answers  to  these  questions,  but 
one  answer  concerns  us  here.  It  is  this :  We  who 
compose  the  Church  do  not  sufficiently  realize 
that  God  is  a  living  God  and  that  the  Church  is 
intended  to  be  the  living  body  through  which  he 
works  in  the  world  and  through  which  he  reveals 
himself.  We  think  of  him  as  far  away  in  space 
and  remote  in  time,  a  God  who  created  once  and 
who  worked  wonders  in  ancient  times  long  past, 
but  we  do  not,  as  we  should,  vividly  think  of  him 
as  a  living  reality,  as  near  to  us  as  the  air  is  to 
the  flying  bird  or  the  water  to  the  swimming  fish. 

79 


80    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

We  suppose  that  the  Church  is  made  up  of  just 
people,  and  is  a  human  convenience  for  getting 
things  done  in  the  world.  We  do  not  see  as  wc 
should  that  it  is  meant  to  be  both  divine  and  hu- 
man and  that  it  never  is  properly  a  Church  unless 
God  lives  in  it,  reveals  himself  by  means  of  it  and 
works  his  spiritual  work  in  the  world  through  it. 

This  truth  of  the  real  Presence  breaks  through 
many  of  Christ's  great  sayings  and  was  one  of 
the  most  evident  features  of  the  experience  of  the 
early  Church.  "Wherever  in  all  the  world  two  or 
three  shall  gather  in  my  name  there  am  I  in  the 
midst  of  them."  "Lo,  I  am  with  you  always,  even 
unto  the  end  of  the  world."  "  Wherever  there  is 
one  alone,"  according  to  the  newly  found  "  say- 
ing "  of  Jesus,  "  I  am  with  him.  Raise  the  stone 
and  there  thou  shalt  find  me;  cleave  the  wood  and 
there  am  I." 

Not  once  alone  was  the  early  Church  invaded 
by  a  life  and  power  from  beyond  itself  as  at 
Pentecost.  The  consciousness  which  character- 
ized this  "  upper  room  "  experience  was  repeated 
in  some  degree  wherever  a  Church  of  the  living 
God  came  into  existence,  as  "  a  tiny  island  in  a  sea 
of  surrounding  paganism."  To  belong  to  the 
Church  meant  to  St.  Paul  to  be  "  joined  to  the 
Lord  in  one  spirit,"  while  the  Church  itself  in  his 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  81 

great  phrase  is  the  body  of  Christ  and  each  indi- 
vidual a  member  in  particular  of  that  body. 

What  a  difference  it  would  make  if  we  could 
rise  to  the  height  of  St.  Paul's  expectation  and 
be  actually  "  builded  together  for  an  habitation 
of  God  through  the  Spirit!  "  We  try  plenty  of 
other  expedients.  We  popularize  our  message; 
we  take  up  fads;  we  adjust  as  far  as  we  can  to 
the  tendencies  of  the  time;  but  only  one  thing 
really  works  after  all  and  that  is  having  the 
Church  become  the  organ  of  the  living  God,  and 
having  it  "  charged  "  with  what  Paul  so  often 
calls  the  power  of  God  — "  the  power  that 
worketh  in  us." 

I  saw  a  car  wheel  recently  that  had  been  run- 
ning many  miles  with  the  brake  clamped  tight 
against  it.  It  was  white  hot  and  it  glowed  with 
heat  and  light  until  it  seemed  almost  transparent 
in  its  extraordinary  luminosity.  Those  Christians 
in  the  upper  room  at  Pentecost  were  baptized 
with  fire  so  that  the  whole  personality  of  each  of 
them  was  glowing  with  heat  and  light,  for  the  fire 
had  gone  all  through  them.  They  suddenly  be- 
came conscious  that  their  divine  Leader  who  was 
no  longer  visible  with  them  had  become  an  in- 
visible presence  and  a  living  power  working 
through  them.    It  is  no  wonder  that  all  Jerusalem 


82    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

and  its  multitudinous  sojourners  were  at  once 
awakened  to  the  fact  that  something  novel  had 
happened. 

Our  controversies  which  have  divided  us  have 
been  controversies  about  things  out  at  the  peri- 
phery, not  about  realities  at  the  heart  and  center. 
We  disagree  about  baptism,  and  we  are  at  vari- 
ance over  problems  of  organization,  ministry,  and 
ordination,  but  the  thing  that  really  matters  is 
the  depth  of  conviction,  consciousness  of  God, 
certainty  of  communion  and  fellowship  with  the 
Spirit.    These  experiences  unite  and  never  divide. 

There  is  after  all,  in  spite  of  all  our  gaps  and 
chasms,  only  one  Church.  It  is  the  Church  of 
the  living  God.  We  are  named  with  many  names. 
We  bear  the  sign  of  a  particular  denomination, 
but  if  we  belong  truly  to  the  Church,  then  we 
belong  to  the  great  Church  of  the  living  God. 
It  is  built  upon  the  foundation  of  the  apostles 
and  prophets,  Jesus  Christ  himself  being  the  chief 
cornerstone,  in  whom  the  building,  fitly  framed  to- 
gether, grows  into  an  holy  temple  in  the  Lord. 
This  is  "  the  blessed  community,"  the  living,  ex- 
panding fellowship  of  vital  faith,  and  it  has  the 
promise  of  the  future,  whether  conferences  on 
"  faith  and  order  "  succeed  or  not,  because  it  is 
the  Church  of  the  living  God. 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  83 

II 

THE   NURSERY  OF   SPIRITUAL   LIFE 

We  are  coming  more  and  more  to  realize  that 
religion  attaches  to  the  simple,  elemental  aspects 
of  our  human  life.  We  shall  not  look  for  it  in  a 
few  rare,  exalted,  and  so-called  "  sacred "  as- 
pects of  life,  separated  off  from  the  rest  of  life 
and  raised  to  a  place  apart.  Religion  to  be  real 
and  vital  must  be  rooted  in  life  itself  and  it  must 
express  itself  through  the  whole  life.  It  should 
begin,  where  all  effective  education  must  begin,  in 
the  home,  which  should  be  the  nursery  of  spiritual 
life. 

The  Christian  home  is  the  highest  product  of 
civilization;  in  fact  there  is  nothing  that  can  be 
called  civilization  where  the  home  is  absent.  The 
savage  is  on  his  way  out  of  savagery  as  soon  as 
he  can  create  a  home  and  make  family  life  at  all 
sacred.  The  real  horror  of  the  "  slums  "  in  our 
great  cities  is  that  there  are  no  homes  there,  but 
human  beings  crowded  indiscriminately  into  one 
room.  It  is  the  real  trouble  with  the  "  poor 
whites  "  whether  in  the  South  or  in  the  North  that 
they  have  failed  to  preserve  the  home  as  a  sacred 
center  of  life. 


84    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

One  of  the  first  services  of  the  foreign  mis- 
sionary is  to  help  to  establish  homes  among  the 
people  whom  he  hopes  to  Christianize.  In  short, 
the  home  is  the  true  unit  of  society.  It  deter- 
mines what  the  individual  shall  be;  it  shapes  the 
social  life;  it  makes  the  Church  possible;  it  is 
the  basis  of  the  state  and  nation.  A  society  of 
mere  individual  units  is  inconceivable.  Men  and 
women,  each  Tor  self,  and  with  no  holy  center  for 
family  life,  could  never  compose  either  a  Church 
or  a  State. 

Christianity  has  created  the  home  as  we  know 
it,  and  that  is  its  highest  service  to  the  world,  for 
the  kingdom  of  heaven  would  be  realized  if  the 
Christian  home  were  universal.  The  mother's 
knee  is  still  the  holiest  place  in  the  world;  and 
the  home  life  determines  more  than  all  influences 
combined  what  the  destiny  of  the  boy  or  girl 
shall  be.  The  formation  of  disposition  and  early 
habits  of  thought  and  manner  as  well  as  the  fun- 
damental emotions  and  sentiments  do  more  to 
shape  and  fix  the  permanent  character  than  do 
any  other  forces  in  the  world. 

We  may  well  rejoice  in  the  power  of  the  Sun- 
day school,  the  Christian  ministry,  the  secular 
school,  the  college,  the  university;  but  all  together 
they  do  not  measure  up  to  the  power  of  the  homes 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  85 

which  are  silently,  gradually  determining  the  fu- 
ture lives  of  those  who  will  compose  the  Sunday 
school,  the  Church,  the  school,  and  the  college. 

The  woman  who  is  successful  in  making  a  true 
home,  where  peace  and  love  dwell,  in  which  the 
children  whom  God  gives  her  feel  the  sacredness 
and  holy  meaning  of  life,  where  her  husband  re- 
news his  strength  for  the  struggles  and  activities 
of  his  life,  and  in  which  all  unite  to  promote  the 
happiness  and  highest  welfare  of  each  other  — 
that  woman  has  won  the  best  crown  there  is  in 
this  life,  and  she  has  served  the  world  in  a  very 
high  degree.  The  union  of  man  and  woman  for 
the  creation  of  a  home  breathing  an  atmosphere 
of  love  is  Christ's  best  parable  of  the  highest  pos- 
sible spiritual  union  where  the  soul  is  the  bride 
and  he  is  the  Eternal  Bridegroom,  and  they  are 
one. 

It  seems  strange  that  these  vital  matters  are  so 
little  emphasized  or  regarded.  Few  things  in  fact 
are  more  ominous  than  the  signs  of  the  disinte- 
gration of  the  home  as  a  nursery  of  spiritual  life. 
We  can,  perhaps,  weather  catastrophes  which  may 
break  down  many  of  our  ancient  customs  and  even 
obliterate  some  of  the  institutions  which  now 
seem  essential  to  civilization;  but  the  home  is  a 
fundamental  necessity  for  true  spiritual  nurture 


86    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

and  culture,  and  if  it  does  not  perform  its  func- 
tion the  world  will  drift  on  toward  unspeakable 
moral  disasters. 


Ill 

THE  DEMOCRACY  WE   AIM  AT 

Democracy  was  in  an  earlier  period  only  a 
political  aim;  it  has  now  become  a  deep  religious 
issue.  It  must  be  discussed  not  only  in  caucuses 
and  conventions,  but  in  churches  as  well.  For  a 
century  and  a  quarter  "  democracy  "  has  been  a 
great  human  battle  word,  and  battle  words  never 
have  very  exact  definitions.  It  has  all  the  time 
been  charged  with  explosive  forces,  and  it  has 
produced  a  kind  of  magic  spell  on  men's  minds 
during  this  long  transitional  period.  But  the 
word  democracy  has,  throughout  this  time,  re- 
mained fluid  and  ill-defined  —  sometimes  express- 
ing the  loftiest  aspirations  and  sometimes  serv- 
ing the  coarse  demagogue  in  his  pursuit  of  selfish 
ends. 

The  goal  or  aim  of  the  early  struggle  after 
democracy  was  the  overthrow  of  human  inequali- 
ties. Men  were  thought  of  in  terms  of  individual 
.units,  and  the  units  were  declared  to  be  intrinsi- 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  87 

cally  equal.  The  contention  was  made  that  they 
all  had,  or  ought  to  have,  the  same  rights  and 
privileges.  This  equality-note  has,  too,  domi- 
nated the  social  and  economic  struggles  of  the  last 
seventy-five  years.  The  focus  has  been  centered 
upon  rights  and  privileges.  Men  have  been 
thought  of,  all  along,  as  individual  units,  and  the 
goal  has  been  conceived  in  political  and  economic 
terms.  Democracy  is  still  supposed,  in  many 
quarters,  to  be  an  organization  of  society  in  which 
the  units  have  equal  political  rights.  Much  of  the 
talk  concerning  democracy  is  still  in  terms  of 
privileges.  It  is  a  striving  to  secure  opportunities 
and  chances.  The  aim  is  the  attainment  of  a 
social  order  in  which  guarantee  is  given  to  every 
individual  that  he  shall  have  his  full  economic 
and  political  rights. 

I  would  not,  in  the  least,  belittle  the  importance 
of  these  claims,  or  underestimate  the  human  gains 
which  have  been  made  thus  far  in  the  direction  of 
greater  equality  and  larger  freedom.  But  these 
achievements,  however  valuable,  are  not  enough. 
They  can  only  form  the  base  from  which  to  start 
the  drive  for  a  more  genuine  and  adequate  type 
of  democracy.  At  its  best  this  scheme  of 
"  equality  "  is  abstract  and  superficial.  Nobody 
will  ever  be  satisfied  with  an  achievement  of  flat 


88    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

equality.  Persons  can  never  be  reduced  to  homo- 
geneous units.  There  are  individual  differences 
woven  into  the  very  fiber  of  human  life,  and  no 
type  of  democracy  can  ever  satisfy  men  like  us 
until  it  gets  beyond  this  artificial  scheme  and 
learns  to  deal  with  the  problem  in  more  adequate 
fashion. 

A  genuinely  Christian  democracy  such  as  the 
religious  soul  is  after  can  not  be  conceived  in  eco- 
nomic terms,  nor  can  it  be  content  with  social 
units  of  equality  or  sameness.  We  want  a  democ- 
racy that  is  vitally  and  spiritually  conceived, 
which  recognizes  and  safeguards  the  irreducible 
uniqueness  of  every  member  of  the  social  whole. 
This  means  that  we  can  not  deal  with  personal 
life  in  terms  of  external  behavior.  We  can  not 
think  of  society  as  an  aggregation  of  units  pos- 
sessing individual  rights  and  privileges.  We  shall 
no  longer  be  satisfied  to  regard  persons  as  beings 
possessing  utilitarian  value  or  made  for  economic 
uses.  We  shall  forever  transcend  the  instru- 
mental idea.  We  shall  begin  rather  with  the  in- 
alienable fact  of  spiritual  worth  as  the  central 
feature  of  the  personal  life.  This  would  mean 
that  every  person,  however  humble  or  limited  in 
scope  or  range,  has  divine  possibilities  to  be  real- 
ized; is  not  a  "  thing  "  to  be  used  and  exploited, 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  89 

but  a  spiritual  creation  to  be  expanded  until  its 
true  nature  is  revealed.  The  democracy  I  want 
will  treat  every  human  person  as  a  unique,  sacred, 
and  indispensable  member  of  a  spiritual  whole,  a 
whole  which  remains  imperfect  if  even  one  of  its 
"  little  ones "  is  missing;  and  its  fundamental 
axiom  will  be  the  liberation  and  realization  of  the 
inner  life  which  is  potential  in  every  member  of 
the  human  race. 

On  the  economic  and  equality  level  we  never 
reach  the  true  conception  of  personal  life.  Men 
are  thought  of  as  units  having  desires,  needs,  and 
wants  to  be  satisfied.  We  are,  on  this  basis,  aim- 
ing to  achieve  a  condition  in  which  the  desires, 
wants,  and  needs  are  well  met,  in  which  each  in- 
dividual contributes  his  share  of  supplies  to  the 
common  stock  of  economic  values,  and  receives  in 
turn  his  equitable  amount.  I  am  dealing,  on  the 
other  hand,  with  a  way  of  life  which  begins  and 
ends,  not  with  a  material  value-concept  at  all,  but 
rather  with  a  central  faith  in  the  intrinsic  worth 
and  infinite  spiritual  possibilities  of  every  person 
in  the  social  organism  —  a  democracy  of  spiritual 
agents. 

It  is  true,  no  doubt,  as  Shylock  said,  that  we 
all  have  "  eyes,  hands,  organs,  dimensions,  senses, 
affections,  passions,"  are  "  subject  to  diseases," 


9o    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

and  "  warmed  and  cooled  by  summer  and  winter." 
"  If  you  prick  us  we  bleed,  if  you  tickle  us  we 
laugh,  if  you  poison  us  we  die,"  and  so  on.  We 
do  surely  have  wants  and  needs.  We  must  con- 
sider values.  We  must  have  food  and  clothes 
and  houses.  We  must  have  some  fair  share  of 
the  earth  and  its  privileges.  But  that  is  only  the 
basement  and  foundation  of  real  living,  and  we 
want  a  democracy  that  is  supremely  concerned 
with  the  development  of  personality  and  with  the 
spiritual  organization  of  society.  We  shall  not 
make  our  estimates  of  persons  on  a  basis  of  their 
uses,  or  on  the  ground  of  their  behavior  as  animal 
beings;  we  shall  live  and  work,  if  we  are  Christ's 
disciples,  in  the  faith  that  man  is  essentially  a 
spiritual  being,  in  a  world  which  is  essentially 
spiritual,  and  that  we  are  committed  to  the  task 
of  awakening  a  like  faith  in  others  and  of  helping 
realize  an  organic  solidarity  of  persons  who  prac- 
tice this  faith.  Our  rule  of  life  would  be  some- 
thing like  the  following:  to  act  everywhere  and 
always  as  though  we  knew  that  we  are  members 
of  a  spiritual  community,  each  one  possessed  of 
infinite  worth,  of  irreducible  uniqueness,  and  indis- 
pensable to  the  spiritual  unity  of  the  whole  —  a 
community  that  is  being  continually  enlarged  by 
the  faith  and  action  of  those  who  now  compose 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  91 

it,  and  so  in  some  measure  being  formed  by  our 
human  effort  to  achieve  a  divine  ideal. 

The  most  important  service  we  can  render  our 
fellow  men  is  to  awaken  in  them  a  real  faith  in 
their  own  spiritual  nature  and  in  their  own  po- 
tential energies,  and  to  set  them  to  the  task  of 
building  the  ideal  democracy  in  which  personality 
is  treated  as  sacred  and  held  safe  from  viola- 
tion, infringement,  or  exploitation,  and,  more  than 
that,  in  which  we  altogether  respect  the  worth  and 
the  divine  hopes  inherent  in  our  being  as  men. 

THE  ESSENTIAL  TRUTH  OF  CHRISTIANITY 

There  are  few  questions  more  difficult  to  an- 
swer than  the  question,  What  is  Christianity? 
Every  attempt  to  answer  it  reveals  the  peculiar 
focus  of  interest  in  the  mind  of  the  writer,  but  it 
leaves  the  main  question  still  asking  for  a  new 
answer. 

"  Always  it  asketh,  asketh,"  and  each  answer, 
to  say  the  least,  is  inadequate.  Harnack,  Loisy, 
and  Tolstoy  have  given  three  characteristic  an- 
swers to  the  great  question.  Their  books  are 
touched  with  genius  and  will  long  continue  to  be 


92    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

read,  but,  like  the  other  books,  they,  too,  reveal 
the  writers  rather  than  solve  the  central  problem. 

One  of  the  greatest  difficulties  about  the  whole 
matter  is  the  difficulty  of  deciding  where  to  look 
for  the  essential  traits  of  Christianity.  Are  they 
to  be  found  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus?  Are  they 
revealed  in  the  message  of  St.  Paul?  Are  they 
embodied  in  the  Messianic  hope?  Are  they  ex- 
hibited in  the  primitive  apostolic  Church?  Are 
they  set  forth  in  the  great  creeds  of  orthodoxy? 
Are  they  expressed  in  the  imperial  authoritative 
Church?  Are  they  to  be  discovered  in  the  Protest- 
antism of  the  modern  world?  This  catalogue 
of  preliminary  questions  shows  how  complicated 
the  subject  really  is.  To  start  in  on  any  one  of 
these  lines  would  be  of  necessity  to  arrive  at  a 
partial  and  one-sided  answer. 

Nowhere  can  we  find  pure  and  unalloyed  Chris- 
tianity; always  we  have  it  mixed  and  combined 
with  something  else,  more  or  less  foreign  to  it. 
The  creeds  contain  a  larger  element  of  Greek 
philosophy  than  of  the  pure  original  gospel.  The 
Messianic  hope  is  far  more  Jewish  than  it  is 
"  Christian."  The  imperial  authoritative  Church 
is  Christianity  interpreted  through  the  Roman 
genius  for  organization  and  merged  and  fused 
with  the  age-long  faiths  and  customs  of  pagan 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  93 

peoples.  Protestantism  is  an  amazingly  complex 
blend  of  ideas  and  ideals  and  everywhere  inter- 
woven with  the  long  processes  of  history.  Even 
this  did  not  drop  from  the  sky  ready-made !  Nor 
did  St.  Paul's  message  flash  in  upon  him  with  the 
Damascus  vision,  as  a  pure  heaven-presented 
truth.  It  proves  to  be  a  very  difficult  task  to  find 
one's  way  back  to  the  pure,  unalloyed  teaching  of 
Jesus,  and,  strangely  enough,  the  moment  one  en- 
deavors to  constitute  this  by  itself  "  Christianity," 
and  undertakes  to  turn  it  into  a  set  of  commands 
and  to  make  it  a  "  new  law,"  he  ends  wTith  a  dry 
legalism  and  not  a  vital,  universal  Christianity. 

What,  then,  is  Christianity?  In  answering  this 
question  we  can  not  confine  ourselves  to  the  teach- 
ing and  the  work  of  Jesus.  Important  as  it  is  to 
go  "  back  to  Jesus  "  that  is  not  enough.  We  can 
not  fully  comprehend  the  meaning  of  Christianity 
until  we  take  into  account  the  fact  that  the  in- 
visible, resurrected  Christ  is  the  continuation 
through  the  ages  of  the  same  revelation  begun  in 
the  life  and  teaching  of  Jesus.  Galilee  and  Judea 
mark  only  one  stage  of  the  gospel,  which  is,  in  its 
fullness,  an  eternal  gospel.  The  Christian  reve- 
lation which  came  to  light  first  in  one  Life  —  its 
master  interpretation  and  incarnation  —  has  since 
been  going  forward  in  a  continuous  and  unbroken 


94    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

manifestation  of  Christ  through  many  lives  and 
through  many  groups  and  through  the  spiritual 
achievements  of  all  those  who  have  lived  by  him. 
Christianity  is,  thus,  the  revelation  of  God 
through  personal  life  —  God  humanly  revealed. 
St.  Paul  and  the  writer  of  the  Fourth  Gospel  were 
the  first  to  reach  this  profound  insight  into  its  ful- 
ler meaning,  though  it  is  plainly  suggested  in  some 
of  the  sayings  of  Jesus  and  in  the  pentecostal  ex- 
periences of  the  first  Christians.  It  is  the  very 
heart  of  the  Pauline  and  the  Johannine  Christian- 
ity. Important  as  is  the  backward  look  to  Jesus 
in  both  these  writers,  the  central  emphasis  is  un- 
mistakably upon  the  inward  experience  of  the  in- 
visible, spiritual  Christ.  This  is  the  expectation 
in  the  Fourth  Gospel:  Greater  things  than  these 
shall  ye  do  when  the  Spirit  comes  upon  you.  This 
is  the  mystery,  the  secret  of  the  gospel,  St.  Paul 
says,  Christ  in  you. 

If  this  is  the  right  clew,  Christianity  is  not  a 
new  law,  nor  an  institution,  nor  a  creed,  nor  a 
body  of  doctrine,  nor  a  millennial  hope.  It  is  a 
type  of  life,  it  is  a  way  of  living.  The  most 
essential  thing  about  it  is  the  fact  of  the  incursion 
of  God  into  human  life,  the  revelation  of  the 
eternal  in  the  midst  of  time,  the  new  discovery 
which  it  brought  of  God's  nature  and  character. 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  95 

We  nowhere  else  come  so  close  to  the  essential 
truth  of  Christianity  as  we  do  in  the  life  and 
experience  of  Jesus.  The  life  at  every  point 
floods  over  and  transcends  the  teaching.  He  is 
the  most  complete  and  adequate  exhibition  of 
what  I  have  called  the  incursion  of  God  into  hu- 
man life,  but  even  so  he  is  the  beginning,  not  the 
end,  of  the  revelation  of  God  through  human- 
ity—  the  Christ-revelation  of  God  —  and  this 
Christ-revelation  of  God  is  God,  so  far  as  he  is 
at  all  adequately  known. 

Some  persons  talk  as  though  God  were  a  kind 
of  composite  Being,  got  by  adding  up  the  God  of 
the  natural  order,  the  God  of  the  Old  Testament, 
and  the  God  as  Father  about  whom  Jesus  taught. 
He  is,  according  to  this  scheme,  in  some  way  a 
compound  aggregate  of  infinite  power,  irresist- 
ible justice,  and  eternal  love.  Sometimes  one 
11  attribute  "  is  predominant,  and  sometimes  an- 
other, wrhile  in  some  mysterious  way  all  the  dis- 
sonant attributes  get  "  reconciled."  This  is 
surely  boggy  ground  to  build  upon. 

Christianity  is  essentially,  I  should  say,  a 
unique  revelation  of  God.  Here  for  the  first 
time  the  race  discovers  that  God  identifies  him- 
self with  humanity,  is  in  the  stream  of  it,  is  suf- 
fering with  us,  is  in  moral  conflict  with  sin  and 


96    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

evil,  is  conquering  through  the  travail  and  trag- 
edy of  finite  persons,  and  is  eternally,  in  mind  and 
heart  and  will,  a  God  of  triumphing  Love.  No 
texts  adequately  "  prove "  this  mighty  truth. 
We  cannot  tie  it  down  to  "  sayings,"  though  there 
are  "  sayings "  which  declare  it.  The  life  of 
Jesus,  the  supreme  decisions  through  which  he 
expresses  his  purpose,  the  spirit  which  dominates 
him  and  guides  his  decisive  actions,  make  the 
truth  plain  that  God  meant  that  to  him  and  that 
his  way  of  life  revealed  that  kind  of  God. 

Through  all  the  fusions  and  confusions  of  his- 
tory and  through  all  the  vagaries  of  man's  tortu- 
ous course  since  the  Church  began  to  be  built, 
Christ  as  eternal  Spirit  has  gone  on  revealing  this 
truth  about  God  and  demonstrating  the  victorious 
power  of  this  way  of  life.  The  making  of  a 
kingdom  of  God  in  the  world,  the  spread  of  the 
brother-spirit,  the  expansion  of  the  love-method, 
the  increase  of  cooperation,  sympathy,  and  serv- 
ice, the  continued  incursion  of  the  divine  into  the 
life  of  the  human,  these  are  the  things  now  and 
always  which  indicate  the  vitality  and  progress  of 
Christianity,  and  the  uninterrupted  revelation  of 
God. 

Always,  in  every  period  of  history,  the  essen- 
tial truth  of  Christianity  must  be  revealed   and 


AGENCIES  OF  CONSTRUCTION  97 

expressed  in  and  through  a  medium  not  altogether 
adapted  to  it.  It  is  always  living  and  working 
in  a  world  more  or  less  alien  to  it.  It  has  at  any 
stage  only  partially  realized  its  ideal,  and  only 
achieved  in  a  fragmentary  way  the  goal  toward 
which  it  is  moving.  It  means  endless  conquest 
and  ever  fresh  winning  of  unwon  victories.  It 
must  be  for  us  all  a  vision  and  a  venture,  it  must 
be  a  thing  of  faith  and  forecast.  At  the  same 
time  it  is,  in  a  very  real  sense,  experience  and 
achievement.  God  has  entered  into  humanity. 
Love  has  revealed  its  redeeming  power.  Grace 
is  as  much  a  reality  as  mountains  are.  The 
kingdom  of  God  though  not  all  in  sight  yet  is,  I 
believe,  as  sure  as  gravitation.  The  invisible, 
eternal  Christ,  living  in  the  soul  of  man,  reveal- 
ing his  will  in  moral  and  spiritual  victories  in 
personal  lives,  is,  I  am  convinced,  as  genuine  a 
fact  as  electricity  is.  But  we  shall  see  all  that 
Christianity  means  only  when  the  living  totality 
of  the  revelation  of  God  through  humanity  is 
complete. 


CHAPTER  VII 
THE  NEAR  AND  THE  FAR 

I 

THINGS  PRESENT  AND  THINGS  TO  COME 

Anaxagoras  said  twenty-five  hundred  years 
ago  that  men  are  always  cutting  the  world  in  two 
with  a  hatchet.  William  James,  in  one  of  his 
living  phrases,  says  with  the  same  import  that 
everybody  dichotomizes  the  cosmos.  It  is  so. 
We  all  incline  to  bisect  life  into  alternative  pos- 
sibilities. We  split  realities  into  opposing 
halves.  We  show  a  kind  of  fascination  for  an 
"  either-or  "  selection.  We  are  prone  to  use  the 
principle  of  parsimony,  and  to  be  content  with 
one  side  of  a  dilemma.  History  presents  a  mul- 
titude of  dualistic  pairs  from  which  one  was  sup- 
posed to  make  his  individual  selection.  There 
was  the  choice  between  this  world  and  the  next 
world;  the  here  and  the  yonder;  the  flesh  and 
the  spirit;  faith  and  reason;  the  sacred  and  the 
secular;  the  outward  and  the  inward,  and  many 

98 


THE  NEAR  AND  THE  FAR  99 

more  similar  alternatives.  This  "  either-or " 
method  always  leaves  its  trail  of  leanness  behind. 
It  makes  life  thin  and  narrow  where  it  might  be 
rich  and  broad,  for  in  almost  every  case  it  is  just 
as  possible  to  have  a  whole  as  to  have  a  half,  to 
take  both  as  to  select  an  alternative.  St.  Paul 
found  his  Corinthians  bisecting  their  spiritual 
lives  and  narrowing  their  interests  to  one  or  two 
possibilities.  One  of  them  would  choose  Paul 
as  his  representative  of  the  truth  and  then  see  no 
value  in  the  interpretation  which  Apollos  had  to 
give.  Another  attached  himself  to  Apollos  and 
missed  all  the  rich  contributions  of  Paul.  Some 
of  the  "  saints  "  of  the  Church  selected  Cephas 
as  the  only  oracle,  and  they  lost  all  the  breadth 
which  would  have  come  to  them  had  they  been 
able  to  make  a  synthesis  of  tRe  opposing  aspects. 
St.  Paul  called  them  from  their  divided  half  to  a 
completed  whole.  He  told  them  that  instead  of 
"  either-or  "  they  could  have  both.  "  All  things 
are  yours;  whether  Paul  or  Apollos,  or  Cephas, 
or  the  world,  or  life,  or  death,  or  things  present 
or  things  to  come,  all  are  yours;  and  ye  are 
Christ's  and  Christ  is  God's."  This  is  the 
method  of  synthesis.  This  is  the  substitution  of 
wholes  for  halves,  the  proffer  of  both  for  an 
"  either-or  "  alternative. 


ioo    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

That  last  pair  of  alternatives  is  an  interesting 
one,  and  many  persons  make  their  bisecting  choice 
of  life  there.  One  well-known  type  of  person 
focuses  on  the  near,  the  here  and  now,  the  things 
present.  Those  who  belong  to  this  class  pro- 
pose to  make  hay  while  the  sun  shines.  They 
glory  in  being  practical.  They  have  what  doc- 
tors call  myopia.  They  see  only  the  near.  Their 
lenses  will  not  adjust  for  the  remote.  They  be- 
lieve in  quick  returns  and  bank  upon  practical 
results.  Those  of  the  other  type  have  presby- 
opia, or  far-sightedness.  They  are  dedicated  to 
the  far-away,  the  remote,  the  yonder.  They  are 
pursuing  rainbows  and  distant  ideals.  They  are 
so  eager  for  the  millennium  that  they  forget  the 
problem  of  their  street  and  of  the  present  day. 
Browning  has  given  us  a  picture  of  both  these 
types: 

"  Thar  low  man  seeks  a  little  thing  to  do, 
Sees  it  and  does  it: 
This  high  man,  with  a  great  thing  to  pursue, 
Dies  ere  he  knows  it. 

That  low  man  goes  on  adding  one  to  one, 

His  hundred's  soon  hit: 
This  high  man,  aiming  at  a  million, 

Misses  an  unit." 


THE  NEAR  AND  THE  FAR  '*■  io'i 

Browning's  sympathies  are  plainly  with  the 
"  high  man  "  who  misses  the  unit,  but  it  is  one 
more  case  of  unnecessary  dichotomy.  What  we 
want  is  the  discovery  of  a  way  to  unite  into  one 
synthesis  things  present  and  things  to  come.  We 
need  to  learn  how  to  seize  this  narrow  isthmus 
of  a  present  and  to  enrich  it  with  the  momentous 
significance  of  past  and  future.  Henry  Bergson 
has  been  telling  us  that  all  rich  moments  of  life 
are  rich  just  because  they  roll  up  and  accumulate 
the  meaning  of  the  past  and  because  they  are 
crowded  with  anticipations  of  the  future.  They 
are  fused  with  memory  and  expectation,  and  one 
of  these  two  factors  is  as  important  as  the  other. 
If  either  dies  away  the  present  becomes  a  useless 
half,  like  the  divided  parts  of  the  child  which 
Solomon  proposed  to  bisect  for  the  two  contend- 
ing mothers. 

We  are  at  one  of  those  momentous  ridges  of 
time  at  the  present  moment.  Some  are  so  busy 
with  the  near  and  immediately  practical  that  they 
cannot  see  the  far  vision  of  the  world  that  is  to 
be  built.  Others  are  so  impressed  with  past 
issues  that  have  become  paramount,  with  the 
glorious  memories  of  the  blessed  Monroe  Doc- 
trine, for  instance,  that  they  have  no  expectant 
eyes  for  the  creation  of  an  interrelated  and  uni- 


-02     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

fied  world.  Another  group  is  so  concerned  with 
the  social  millennium  that  they  discount  the  les- 
sons of  the  past,  the  message  of  history,  the  wis- 
dom of  experience,  and  fly  to  the  useless  task  of 
constructing  abstract  human  paradises  and 
dreams  of  a  world-kingdom  which  could  exist 
only  in  a  realm  where  men  had  ceased  to  be  men. 
What  we  want  is  a  synthesis  of  things  present 
and  things  to  come,  a  union  of  the  practical, 
tested  experience  of  life  and  the  inspired  vision 
of  the  prophet  who  sees  unfolding  the  possibili- 
ties of  human  life  raised  to  its  fuller  glory  in 
Christ,  the  incarnation  of  the  way  of  love,  which 
always  has  worked,  is  working  now,  and  always 
will  work. 


II 

TWO  TYPES   OF   MINISTRY 

Most  people  like  to  be  told  what  they  already 
think.  They  enjoy  hearing  their  own  opinions 
and  ideas  promulgated,  and  no  amens  are  so 
hearty  as  the  ones  which  greet  the  reannounce- 
ment  of  views  we  have  already  held. 

The  natural  result  is  that  speakers  are  apt  to 
give  their  hearers  what  they  want.     They  take 


THE  NEAR  AND  THE  FAR  103 

the  line  of  least  resistance  and  say  what  will 
arouse  the  enthusiasm  of  the  people  before  them, 
and  they  get  their  quick  reward.  They  are  pop- 
ular at  once.  There  is  a  high  tide  of  emotion 
as  they  proceed  to  tell  what  everybody  present 
already  thinks,  and  they  soon  find  themselves  in 
great  demand. 

The  main  trouble  with  such  an  easy  ministry 
is  that  it  isn't  worth  doing.  It  accomplishes  next 
to  nothing.  It  merely  arouses  a  pleasurable  emo- 
tion and  leaves  lives  where  they  were  before. 
And  yet  not  quite  where  they  were  either,  for  the 
constant  repetition  of  things  we  already  believe 
dulls  the  mind  and  deadens  the  will  and  weakens 
rather  than  strengthens  the  power  of  life.  It  is 
an  easy  ministry  both  for  speakers  and  hearers, 
but  it  is  ominous  for  them  both. 

The  prophet  has  a  very  different  task.  He 
cannot  give  people  what  they  want.  He  is  under 
an  unescapable  compulsion  to  give  them  what  his 
soul  believes  to  be  true.  He  cannot  take  lines 
of  least  resistance;  he  must  wTork  straight  up 
against  the  current.  He  cannot  work  for  quick 
effects;  he  must  slowly  educate  his  people  and 
compel  them  to  see  what  they  have  not  seen  be- 
fore. The  amens  are  very  slow  to  come  to  his 
words,  and  he  cannot  look  for  emotional  thrills. 


104    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

He  must  risk  all  that  is  dear  to  himself,  except 
the  truth,  as  he  sets  himself  to  his  task,  and  he 
is  bound  to  tread  lonely  wine-presses  before  he 
can  see  of  the  travail  of  his  soul  and  be  satisfied. 

Every  age  has  these  two  types  of  ministry. 
They  are  both  ancient  and  familiar.  There  are 
always  persons  who  are  satisfied  to  give  what  is 
wanted,  who  are  glad  to  cater  to  popular  taste, 
who  like  the  quick  returns.  But  there  are,  too, 
always  a  few  souls  to  be  found  who  volunteer  for 
the  harder  task.  They  forego  the  amens  and 
patiently  teach  men  to  see  farther  than  they  have 
seen  before.  Their  first  question  is  not,  What 
do  people  want  me  to  say?  but,  What  is  God's 
truth  which  to-day  ought  to  be  heard  through 
me?  and  knowing  that,  they  speak.  They  do 
not  move  their  hearers  as  the  other  type  does; 
they  do  not  reach  so  many,  and  they  miss  the 
popular  rewards  —  but  they  are  compassed 
about  by  a  great  cloud  of  witnesses  as  they  fight 
their  battles  for  the  truth,  and  they  have  their 
joy. 

But  this  is  not  quite  all  there  is  to  say.  It  is 
not  possible  to  teach  the  new  effectively  without 
linking  it  up  with  the  old.  The  wholly  new  is  gen- 
erally not  true.  New,  fresh  truth  emerges  out 
of  ancient  experience;   it  does  not  drop   like   a 


THE  NEAR  AND  THE  FAR  105 

shooting  star  from  the  distant  skies.  The  great 
prophets  in  all  ages  have  lived  close  to  the  peo- 
ple. They  have  not  had  their  "  ear  to  the 
ground,"  to  use  a  political  phrase,  but  they  have 
understood  the  human  heart.  They  have  lived 
in  the  great  currents  of  life.  They  have  heard 
the  going  in  the  mulberry  trees,  and  have  felt 
the  breaking  forth  of  the  dawning  light  just  be- 
cause of  their  double  union  with  men  and  God. 

All  sound  pedagogy  recognizes  this  principle. 
The  good  teacher  knits  the  new  material  which 
he  wishes  learned  on  to  the  old  and  familiar. 
He  takes  his  student  forward  by  gradual  stages, 
not  by  leaps  and  bounds,  and  he  binds  the  known 
and  unknown  together  by  rational  synthesis,  not 
by  some  strange,  foreign,  magical  glue.  The 
more  we  wish  to  belong  to  the  prophet-class  and 
to  raise  our  hearers  to  new  and  greater  levels  of 
truth  and  insight,  the  more  we  shall  strive  to 
understand  the  truth  that  has  already  been  re- 
vealed, to  saturate  ourselves  with  it,  to  fuse  and 
kindle  our  lives  with  those  immense  realities  by 
which  men  in  past  ages  have  lived  and  conquered. 
So,  and  only  so,  can  we  go  forward  and  take 
others  forward  with  us  to  new  experiences  and 
to  new  discoveries  of  the  light  that  never  was  on 
sea  or  land. 


106     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

III 

"  WE  HAVE  SEEN  HIS  STAR  " 

Every  time  the  Christmas  anniversary  returns, 
the  heart  renews  its  youthful  joy  in  the  thrilling 
stories  of  the  nativity.  We  cannot  be  too  thank- 
ful for  the  inspiration  and  poetry  and  imagination 
which  touch  and  glorify  every  aspect  of  our  re- 
ligious faith.  Some  dull  and  leaden-minded 
pedants  appear  to  think  that  the  "  real  "  Christ 
is  the  person  we  get  when  we  take,  for  the  con- 
struction of  our  figure,  only  those  facts  about 
him  which  can  be  rationalistically,  historically, 
and  critically  verified.  We  are  thus  reduced  to 
a  few  religious  ideas,  a  little  group  of  "  sayings," 
a  tiny  body  of  events,  which  explain  none  of  the 
immense  results  that  followed.  The  real  Christ, 
on  the  contrary,  is  this  rich,  wonderful,  mysteri- 
ous, baffling  person  whose  life  was  vastly  greater 
even  than  his  deeds  or  his  words,  who  aroused 
the  wonder  and  imagination  of  all  who  came  in 
contact  with  him,  who  touched  everything  with 
emotion,  and  fused  religion  forever  with  poetry 
and  feeling.     He,  in  a  very  true  sense, 

"  .  .  .  touches  all  things  common, 
Till  they  rise  to  touch  the  spheres." 


THE  NEAR  AND  THE  FAR  107 

Not  only  over  the  manger,  but  over  the  entire 
story  of  his  life,  hovers  the  glory  of  the  star. 
It  is  a  life  that  will  not  stay  down  on  the  dull 
earth  of  mere  fact;  it  always  rises  into  the  region 
of  idealism  and  beauty.  It  always  transcends  the 
things  of  sight  and  touch.  We  have  a  religion 
which  cannot  be  confined  in  a  system  of  doctrine 
or  a  code  of  ethics;  it  partakes  too  intimately  of 
life  for  that.  It  is,  like  its  Founder,  a  full 
rounded  reality,  rich  in  inspiration  and  emotion 
and  wonder,  as  well  as  in  intellectual  ideas  and 
truth.  When  the  star  wanes  and  imagination 
falls  away,  and  we  hold  in  our  thin  hands  only 
the  husks  of  a  dead  system,  the  power  of  religion 
is  over. 

The  same  thing  is  true  of  the  cross.  Its  power 
lies  in  the  fullness  and  richness  of  the  reality.  We 
do  not  want  to  reduce  it,  but  to  raise  it  to  its  full 
meaning  and  glory  as  a  way  of  complete  life. 
The  direction  of  present-day  Christianity  is  cer- 
tainly not  away  from  Calvary,  but  quite  the  op- 
posite. The  men  who  are  in  these  days  trying 
to  deliver  our  religion  from  formalism  and  tra- 
dition find  not  less  meaning  in  the  cross  than  a 
former  generation  did,  but  vastly  more.  The 
atonement  remains  at  the  center,  as  it  has  always 
done,  in  vital  Christianity.     All  attempts  to  re- 


108    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

duce  Christianity  to  a  dry  and  bloodless  system 
of  philosophy,  with  the  appeal  of  the  heart  left 
out,  fail  now  as  they  have  always  failed.  It  is 
a  Savior  that  men,  tangled  in  their  sins  and  their 
sorrows,  still  want  —  not  merely  a  great  thinker 
or  a  great  teacher. 

The  Church  has,  no  doubt,  far  too  much 
neglected  the  idea  of  the  kingdom  of  God  as 
Christ  expounded  it  in  sermon  and  parable,  and 
hosts  of  prominent  Christians  do  not  at  all  under- 
stand what  this  great,  central  teaching  of  the 
Master  meant  then  and  means  now.  His  trans- 
forming revelation  of  the  nature  of  God  has,  too, 
been  missed  by  multitudes,  who  still  hold  Jewish 
rather  than  Christian  conceptions  of  God.  But 
patient  study  of  the  gospel  is  slowly  forcing  these 
ideas  into  the  thought  of  men  everywhere,  and 
books  abound  now  which  make  his  teaching  clear 
and  luminous. 

What  is  needed  above  everything  else  now  is 
that  we  shall  not  lose  any  of  our  vision  of  Christ 
as  Savior,  and  that  we  shall  live  our  lives  in  his 
presence.  It  is  through  the  cross  that  we  touch 
closest  to  the  Savior-heart,  and  it  is  here  that  we 
feel  our  lives  most  powerfully  moved  by  the  cer- 
tainty of  his  divine  nature.  Arguments  may  fail, 
but  one  who  looks  steadily  at  this  voluntary  Suf- 


THE  NEAR  AND  THE  FAR  109 

ferer,  giving  himself  for  us,  will  cry  out,  with 
one  of  old,  "  My  Lord  and  my  God." 

Nothing  short  of  that  will  do,  I  believe,  if 
Christianity  is  to  remain  a  saving  religion.  Good 
men  have  died  in  all  ages;  great  teachers  have 
again  and  again  gone  to  their  deaths  in  behalf 
of  their  truth  or  out  of  love  for  their  disciples. 
It  touches  us  as  we  read  of  their  bravery  and 
their  loyalty,  but  we  do  not  and  we  cannot  build 
a  world-saving  religion  upon  them.  Christ  is 
different!  We  feel  that  in  him  the  veil  is  lifted 
and  we  are  face  to  face  with  God.  When  we 
hear  with  our  hearts  the  words,  "  In  the  world 
ye  shall  have  tribulation;  but  fear  not,  for  I  have 
overcome  the  world,"  we  feel  that  we  are  hearing 
the  triumph  of  God  in  the  midst  of  suffering  • — 
we  are  hearing  of  an  eternal  triumph.  Christ 
can  not  be  for  us  less  than  God  manifested  here 
in  a  world  of  time  and  space  and  finiteness,  doing 
in  time  what  God  does  in  eternity — -suffering 
over  sin,  entering  vicariously  into  the  tragedy  of 
evil,  and  triumphing  while  he  treads  the  wine- 
press. No  one  has  fathomed  the  awfulness  of 
sin,  until,  in  some  sense,  he  feels  that  his  sin 
makes  God  suffer,  that  it  crucifies  him  afresh. 
If  Christ  is  God  revealed  in  time  —  made  visible 
and  vocal  to  men  —  then,  through  the  cross,  we 


no    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

shall  discover  that  we  are  not  to  think  of  God 
henceforth  as  Sovereign  —  not  a  Being  yonder, 
enjoying  his  royal  splendor.  We  must  think  of 
him  all  the  time  in  terms  of  Christ.  He  is  an 
eternal  Lover  of  our  hearts.  We  pierce  him 
with  our  sins;  we  wound  him  with  our  wicked- 
ness. He  suffers,  as  mothers  who  love  suffer, 
and  he  enters  vicariously  into  all  the  tragic  deeps 
of  our  lives,  striving  to  bring  us  home  to  him. 
Jan  Ruysbroeck  says: 

"  You  must  love  the  Love  which  loves  you  everlastingly, 
and  if  you  hold  fast  by  his  love,  he  remakes  you  by  his 
Spirit,  and  then  joy  is  yours.  The  Spirit  of  God  breathes 
into  you,  and  you  breathe  it  out  in  rest  and  joy  and  love. 
This  is  eternal  life,  just  as  in  our  mortal  life  we  breathe 
out  the  air  that  is  in  us  and  breathe  in  fresh  air." 


CHAPTER  VIII 
THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY 


THE   RELIGIOUS    SIGNIFICANCE    OF   DEATH 

The  Greeks  had  their  story  of  Tithonus,  a 
deeply  significant  myth  of  a  man  who  could  not 
die,  but  who  grew  ever  older  and  more  decrepit 
until  the  tragedy  became  unendurable  and  he 
envied  those  "  happy  men  that  have  the  power 
to  die."  Methuselah's  biography  is  brief  and 
compact,  but  it  is  full  of  pathos:  "  He  lived  nine 
hundred  and  sixty-nine  years  and  he  died." 
There  was  nothing  more  to  add.  Somebody  has 
invented  a  radium  motor  which  strikes  a  little 
bell  every  second  and  is  warranted  to  go  on  doing 
that  for  thirty  thousand  years.  The  Methuselah 
monotony  and  tedium  seem  much  like  that  thin 
seriatim  row  of  items.  It  just  goes  on  with  no 
novelty  and  no  cumulation,  and  finally  the  one 
relieving    novelty    is    introduced  — "  he    died." 

What  a  happy  fact  it  was !     The  wandering  Jew 

in 


ii2     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

stands  out  in  imaginative  fiction  as  one  of  the 
saddest  of  all  men  —  a  being  who  endlessly  goes 
on.  The  angel  of  death  seems  a  gentle,  gracious 
messenger  when  one  thinks  of  the  prospect  of  un- 
ending life,  going  on  in  a  one-dimensional  series, 
with  no  new  values  and  no  fresh  powers  of  ex- 
pansion. To  many  persons  the  idea  of  heaven 
is  simply  an  expanded  Methuselah  biography. 

Biologists  have  completely  reversed  the  theory 
that  death  is  an  enemy.  It  has  long  ago  taken 
its  place  in  the  system  of  teleology,  among  "  the 
things  that  are  for  us."  Death  has,  beyond 
question,  and  has  had,  "  a  natural  utility."  It 
has  played  an  important  role  in  raising  life  from 
the  low  unicellular  type  to  the  rich  complex  forms 
of  higher  organisms,  from  "  the  amoeba  that 
never  dies  of  old  age  "  to  the  new  dynasty  of  be- 
ings that  have  greater  range  and  scope,  but  which 
nevertheless  do  die.  Edwin  Arnold  in  his  strik- 
ing essay  on  Death  says :  "  The  lowest  living 
thing,  the  Protamceba,  has  obviously  never  died! 
It  is  a  formless  film  of  protoplasm,  which  multi- 
plies by  simple  division;  and  the  specimen  under 
any  microscope  derives,  and  must  derive,  in 
unbroken  existence  from  the  amoeba  which  moved 
and  fed  forty  aeons  ago.  The  slime  of  our  near- 
est puddle  lived  before  the  Alps  were  made !  " 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY        113 

Methuselah  was  a  mere  child  in  a  perambulator 
compared  to  an  amoeba. 

In  cases  where  the  continued  process  of  cell- 
division  produced  a  lowered  and  weakened  type 
of  amoeba  a  rudimentary  form  of  union  of  cells 
took  place,  which  resulted  in  raising  the  entire 
level  of  life  and  eventually  carried  the  biological 
order  up  to  wholly  new  possibilities.  So  that 
the  threatened  approach  of  death  was  met  with  an 
increase  of  life.  "  It  is  more  probable  that  death 
is  a  consequence  of  life,"  says  the  famous  biolo- 
gist, Edward  Cope,  "  rather  than  that  the  living 
is  a  product  of  the  non-living."  * 

But  in  any  case  the  testimony  of  biology  can 
give  us  little  help.  Even  if  death  has  had  a 
function  in  the  process  of  evolution,  as  seems 
likely,  that  in  no  way  eases  the  situation  when  the 
staggering  blow  falls  into  our  precious  circle  and 
removes  from  it  an  intimate  personal  life  that 
was  indispensable  to  us.  It  is  poor,  cold  com- 
fort to  be  told  that  death  has  assisted  through  the 
long  aeons  in  the  slow  process  of  heightening  the 
entire  scale  of  life,  if  there  is  nothing  more  to  say 
regarding  the  future  of  this  dear  one  whose  frail 
bark  has  now  gone  to  wreck.  We  must  somehow 
rise  above  the  level  of  brute  facts  and  discover 

1  Primary  Factors  of  Organic  Evolution,  p.  483. 


ii4    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

some  spiritual  significance  which  death  has  re- 
vealed, before  we  can  arrive  at  any  source  of 
comfort.  We  are  all  agreed  with  Shakespeare's 
Claudio  that  "  'tis  too  horrible  "  to  think  of  death 
as  a  sheer  terminus: 

"...  to  die  and  go  we  know  not  where ; 
To  lie  in  cold  obstruction,  and  to  rot; 
This  sensible  warm  motion  to  become 
A  kneaded  clod;  and  the  delighted  spirit 
To  bathe  in  fiery  floods,  or  to  reside 
In  thrilling  regions  of  rock-ribbed  ice; 
To  be  imprisoned  in  the  viewless  winds, 
And  blown  with  restless  violence  round  about 
The  pendent  world." 

Death  has  undoubtedly  brought  to  conscious- 
ness, as  has  perhaps  no  other  experience,  the 
deeper  meaning  and  significance  of  personal  life. 
This  and  not  its  biological  function  is  what  con- 
cerns us  now.  It  has  been  said  that  "  freedom," 
so  far  as  it  is  achieved,  "  is  the  main  achievement 
of  man  in  the  past."  x  I  should  be  inclined  rather 
to  hold  that  man's  main  achievement  on  the 
planet  so  far  has  been  to  discover  that  personal 
life  reveals  within  itself  an  absolute  value  and 
possesses  unmistakable  capacity  to  transcend  the 
finite  and  temporal,  an  experience  which  makes 

1  Bosanquet,  Value  and  Destiny  of  the  Individual,  p.  320. 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       115 

freedom  possible.  I  believe  death  has  ministered 
more  than  any  other  single  fact  that  confronts  us 
in  bringing  those  truths  to  clear  consciousness. 
We  cannot,  of  course,  dissociate  death  and  sep- 
arate it  from  pain,  suffering,  struggle  and  danger, 
which  are  essentially  bound  up  with  it.  If  the 
world  were  to  be  freed  completely  from  death  it 
wrould  at  once  ipso  facto  be  freed  from  the  dan- 
ger of  it  and  by  the  same  altered  condition  strug- 
gle would  to  a  large  degree  be  eliminated,  and 
likewise  those  other  great  tests  of  life  —  pain 
and  suffering,  which  culminate  in  death.  These 
things  are  all  u  perilous  incidents  "  of  finiteness, 
but  of  a  finiteness  which  transcends  itself  and  is 
allied  to  something  beyond  itself.  To  eliminate 
these  things  would  be  to  miss  the  discovery  of 
this  strange  finite-infinite  nature  of  ours  which 
makes  life  such  a  venture  and  so  full  of  mystery 
and  wonder.  If  we  had  been  only  naturalistic 
beings,  curious  bits  of  the  earth's  crust  merely 
capable  of  recording  the  empirical  facts  as  they 
occurred,  death  would  have  taken  an  unimpor- 
tant place  as  one  more  event  in  a  successive  series 
of  phenomena.  Built  as  we  are,  however,  with 
a  beyond  within  ourselves,  the  fact  of  mutability 
and  mortality  has  occasioned  a  transformation  of 
our  entire  estimate  of  life  and  has  led  us  by  the 


n6    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

hand  to  a  Pisgah  view  which  we  should  never  have 
got  if  there  had  been  no  invasion  of  death  into 
our  world. 

"  It  is  a  venerable  commonplace,"  as  Professor 
Schiller  of  Oxford  has  said,  "  that  among  the 
melancholy  prerogatives  which  distinguish  man 
from  the  other  animals  and  bestow  a  deeper  sig- 
nificance on  human  life  is  the  fact  that  man  alone 
is  aware  of  the  doom  that  terminates  his  earthly 
existence,  and  on  this  account  lives  a  more  spirit- 
ual life,  in  the  ineffable  consciousness  of  the 
'  sword  of  Damocles '  which  overshadows  him 
and  weights  his  lightest  action  with  gigantic  im- 
port. Nay,  more;  stimulated  by  the  ineluctable 
necessity  of  facing  death,  and  of  living  so  as  to 
face  it  with  fortitude,  man  has  not  abandoned 
himself  to  nerveless  inaction,  to  pusillanimous 
despair;  he  has  conceived  the  thought,  he  has 
cherished  the  hope,  he  has  embraced  the  belief, 
of  a  life  beyond  the  grave,  and  opened  his  soul  to 
the  religions  which  baulk  the  king  of  terrors  of 
his  victims  and  defraud  him  of  his  victory.  Thus, 
the  fear  of  death  has  been  redeemed,  and  en- 
nobled by  the  consoling  belief  in  immortality,  a 
belief  from  which  none  are  base  enough  to  with- 
hold their  moral  homage,  even  though  the  debil- 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       117 

ity  of  mortal  knowledge  may  debar  a  few  from 
a  full  acceptance  of  its  promise."  a 

The  early  animistic  views  of  survival,  which 
were  the  first  forecasts  of  a  life  beyond,  were  due 
not  so  much  to  the  consciousness  of  the  moral 
grandeur  of  life  as  to  actual  experiences  which 
gave  to  primitive  man  a  confident  assurance  of 
some  form  of  life  after  the  death  of  the  body. 
Dreams  had  an  important  part  in  leading  man  to 
this  naive  and  yet  momentous  discovery.  In  a 
world  which  had  no  established  criterion  of 
"  reality,"  the  experiences  of  vivid  dreams  were 
taken  to  be  as  real  as  any  other  experiences,  and 
in  these  dreams  the  dreamer  often  found  his  dead 
ancestors  and  friends  and  tribesmen  once  more 
present  with  him,  active  in  the  chase  or  the  fight 
and  as  real  as  ever  they  were  in  life.  Trance, 
hallucination,  telepathy,  mediumship,  possession, 
are  not  new  phenomena;  they  are  very  primitive 
and  ancient.  These  things  are  as  old  as  smiling 
and  weeping.  These  psychic  experiences  had 
their  part  to  play  also  in  giving  the  early  races 
their  belief  that  the  dead  person  still  existed 
though  in  an  altered  and  attenuated  form  as  an 
animus  or  "  spirit  "  or  "  shade."     This  empirical 

1  F.  C.  S.  Schiller,  Humanism,  pp.  228-9. 


n8    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

view  of  survival,  built  on  actual  experiences,  was 
more  or  less  incapable  of  advance.  No  further 
knowledge  could  be  acquired  and  the  construc- 
tions fashioned  by  imagination,  in  reference  to 
"  the  scenery  and  circumstance  "  of  the  departed 
soul,  could  satisfy  only  an  uncritical  mind.  These 
constructions  were,  too,  often  crude  and  bizarre, 
and  tended,  in  the  hands  of  priests,  to  hamper 
man's  moral  development  rather  than  to  further 
it.  But  in  any  case  man  had  made  the  moment- 
ous guess  that  death  did  not  utterly  end  him  or 
his  career.  Poor  and  thin  as  this  dimly  con- 
ceived future  world  of  primitive  man's  hope  may 
have  been,  the  psychological  effect  of  the  hope 
was  by  no  means  negligible.  Professor  Shaler 
of  Harvard  was  probably  speaking  truly  when 
he  wrote: 

"  If  we  should  seek  some  one  mark,  which  in 
the  intellectual  advance  from  the  brutes  to  man, 
might  denote  the  passage  to  the  human  side,  we 
might  well  find  it  in  the  moment  when  it  dawned 
upon  the  nascent  man  that  death  was  a  mystery 
which  he  had  in  his  turn  to  meet.  From  the 
time  when  man  began  to  face  death  to  the  pres- 
ent stage  of  his  development  there  has  been  a 
continuous  struggle  between  the  motives  of  per- 
sonal fear  on  the  one  hand,   and  valor  on   the 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       119 

other.  That  of  fear  has  been  constantly  aided  by 
the  work  of  the  imagination.  For  one  fact  of 
danger  there  have  been  scores  of  fancied  risks  to 
come  from  the  unseen  world.  Against  this  great 
host  of  imaginary  ills,  which  tended  utterly  to 
bear  men  down,  they  had  but  one  helper  —  their 
spirit  of  valiant  self-sacrifice  for  the  good, of  their 
family,  their  clan,  their  state,  their  race,  or,  in 
the  climax,  for  the  Infinite  above. "  * 

It  marked  a  still  greater  intellectual  advance 
when  primitive  man  came  to  the  immense  con- 
clusion not  only  that  death  was  a  mystery  which 
he  in  turn  must  meet,  but  that  he  was  a  being 
that  would  survive  death. 

It  is,  however,  in  another  field  that  we  must 
look  for  the  most  important  spiritual  results  from 
the  contemplation  of  death,  that  is  in  what  we 
may  call  the  field  of  spiritual  values.  I  have 
already  contended  that  man's  greatest  discovery 
was  his  discovery  of  the  absolute  value  of  moral 
personality.  Of  course,  it  came  fairly  late  in  the 
development  of  the  race  and  by  no  means  has 
everybody  made  it  yet!  But  at  any  rate  there 
came  a  time  somewhere  in  the  process  of  history 
when  man  did  discover  a  beyond  within  himself, 

1  Shaler,  The  Individual,  p.  194. 


120    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

a  greater  inclusive  self  present  within  his  own 
fragmentary,  finite  spirit,  revealed  as  a  passion 
for  perfection  not  yet  attained  or  experienced,  a 
prophesying  consciousness  of  eternity  within  his 
often  baffled  and  defeated  temporal  life.  No  one 
has  expressed  the  fact  of  this  inner  beyond  within 
us  better  than  old  Sir  Thomas  Browne  did  in  the 
seventeenth  century:  "  We  are  men  and  we  know 
not  how;  there  is  something  in  us  that  can  be 
without  us  and  will  be  after  us,  though  it  is 
strange  that  it  hath  no  history  of  what  it  was 
before  us,  nor  can  tell  how  it  entered  in  us.  .  .  . 
There  is  surely  a  piece  of  Divinity  in  us,  some- 
thing that  was  before  the  elements  and  owes  not 
homage  unto  the  Sun." 

The  sublimity  and  grandeur  revealed  in  nature, 
the  majesty  of  mountains,  the  might  of  seas,  the 
mystery  of  the  ocean,  the  glory  of  the  sun  and 
stars,  the  awe  inspired  by  the  thunderstorm, 
awakened  man's  own  spirit  and  made  him  dimly 
conscious  of  a  kindred  grandeur  in  his  own  an- 
swering soul.  The  greatest  step  of  all  was  taken 
when  man  awoke  to  the  meaning  and  value  of 
love.  In  some  dim  sense  love  preceded  the 
emergence  of  man.  The  evolution  of  a  mother 
and  of  a  father,  as  Drummond  showed,  began 
far  back  in  forms  of  life  below  man.     But  the 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       121 

type  of  love  which  transcends  instinct,  which  is 
raised  above  sex-assertion,  and  is  transmuted  into 
an  unselfish  appreciation  of  the  beauty  and  worth 
of  personal  character  —  that  type  of  love  is  one 
of  the  most  wonderful  flowers  that  has  yet  blos- 
somed on  our  Igdrasil  tree  of  life  and  it  was  late 
and  slow  to  come,  like  flowers  on  the  century- 
plant. 

When  death  broke  in  and  separated  those  who 
loved  in  this  great  fashion  the  whole  problem  of 
death  at  once  became  an  urgent  one.  In  fact 
death  received  attention  in  proportion  as  the 
higher  values  of  life  began  to  be  realized.  Walt 
Whitman's  fiery  outburst  reveals  clearly  his  esti- 
mate of  the  worth  of  personality.  "  If  rats  and 
maggots  end  us,  then  alarum !  for  we  are  be- 
trayed "  —  he  might  have  said  "  if  microbes  end 
us."  Emerson's  poignant  outcry  of  soul  is  found 
in  his  greatest  poem  — •  "  Threnody  "  : 

"  There's  not  a  sparrow  or  a  wren, 
There's  not  a  blade  of  autumn  grain, 
Which  the  four  seasons  do  not  tend 
And  tides  of  life  and  increase  lend; 
And  every  chick  of  every  bird, 
And  weed  and  rock-moss  is  preferred. 
O  ostrich-like  forgetfulness! 
O  loss  of  larger  in  the  less! 


122     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

Was  there  no  star  that  could  be  sent, 
No  watcher  in  the  firmament, 
No  angel  from  the  countless  host 
That  loiters  round  the  crystal  coast, 
Could  stoop  to  heal  that  only  child, 
Nature's  sweet  marvel  undefiled, 
And  keep  the  blossom  of  the  earth, 
Which  all  her  harvests  were  not  worth?" 

No  such  high  revolt  of  spirit  was  occasioned  so 
long  as  death  was  a  mere  biological  event,  ter- 
minating one  life  to  give  room  for  another.  This 
cry  of  soul  means  the  discovery  of  the  infinite 
preciousness  of  personal  life.  The  mind  now 
turns  in  on  itself  and  takes  a  new  account  of  its 
stock,  and  as  a  result  man  began  to  solve  the 
problem  of  death  in  an  enlarged  way.  He  was 
no  longer  satisfied  with  a  form  of  survival  based 
upon  his  experiences  in  dreams,  trance  and  hallu- 
cination; he  came  to  feel  that  he  must  have  a 
destiny  which  fitted  his  spiritual  worth  as  a  man. 
He  finds  within  himself  intimation  of  powers  and 
possibilities  beyond  those  required  for  the  strug- 
gle of  life  here.  He  feels  by  that  same  insight 
which  carries  him  out  beyond  the  seen  to  a  ra- 
tional faith  in  the  unseen  that  is  necessary  to  com- 
plete it,  that  this  little  arc  of  earthly  life  with  its 
revelations  of  spiritual  value  and  its  transcend- 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       123 

ent  prophecies  of  more  must  find  fulfillment  some- 
where in  a  form  of  life  that  rounds  it  out  full 
circle. 

The  argument  does  not  build  on  a  passion  of 
desire,  as  some  doubters  have  said.  We  do  not 
assume  immortality  just  because  we  want  it.  It 
rests  upon  the  moral  consistency  of  the  universe, 
upon  the  trustworthy  character  of  the  eternal 
nature  of  things.  The  moral  values  which  are 
revealed  in  fully  developed  personality  are  cer- 
tainly as  real,  as  much  a  fact  of  the  universe,  as 
are  the  tides  or  the  orbits  of  planets.  If  we  can 
count  upon  the  continuity  of  these  occurrences 
and  upon  our  predictions  of  them,  just  as  surely 
can  we  count  on  the  consistency  of  the  universe 
in  reference  to  spiritual  values.  If  there  is  con- 
servation of  matter  there  is  at  least  as  good 
ground  for  affirming  conservation  of  moral  val- 
ues. If  biological  life  can  pass  over  the 
slender  bridge  of  a  microscopic  germ-plasm  and 
can  carry  with  itself  over  that  feeble  bridge  the 
traces  of  habit  and  feature,  the  curve  of  nose  and 
the  emotional  tone  of  some  far-off  dead  ancestor, 
and  all  the  heredity  gains  of  the  past,  may  we  not 
count  upon  the  permanence  of  that  in  us  which 
allies  us  to  that  infinite  Spirit  who  is  even  now 
the  invisible  environment  of  all  we  see  and  touch? 


124    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

It  is  not  a  matter  of  reward  or  of  "  wages  " 
that  concerns  us.  It  is  not  "  happy  isles "  or 
care-free  "  Edens  "  that  we  seek,  not  "  golden 
streets  "  and  endless  comfort  to  make  up  for  the 
stress  and  toil  of  the  lean  years  here  below.  We 
want  to  find  the  whole  of  ourselves,  we  ask  the 
privilege  of  seeing  this  fragmentary  being  of  ours 
unfold  into  the  full  expression  of  its  gifts  and 
powers.  The  new  period  may  be  even  more 
strenuous  and  hazardous  than  this  one  has  been  — 
still  we  want  the  venture.  We  ask  for  the  cul- 
minating acts  that  will  complete  the  drama,  so 
far  only  fairly  begun.  It  must  be  not  a  mere 
serial,  or  straight  line,  existence;  it  must  be  the 
opening  out  and  expansion  of  the  possibilities 
which  we  feel  within  ourselves  —  new  dimensions, 
please  God. 

I  am  not  wrong,  I  am  sure,  in  claiming  that 
this  postulate,  this  rational  faith  in  the  conserva- 
tion of  values,  is  an  asset  which  death  has  re- 
vealed to  the  race.  The  shock  of  death  has 
always  made  love  appear  a  greater  thing  than  we 
knew  before  the  baffling  crisis  came  upon  us.  It 
has,  too,  by  the  same  shock  of  contrast,  awakened 
man  to  the  full  comprehension  of  the  moral  sub- 
limity of  the  good  life.  Kant  maintained  that  the 
sense  of  the  sublime  is  due  to  the  fact  that  when 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       125 

we  are  confronted  with  the  supreme  powers  of 
nature  we  then  become  aware  of  something  un- 
fathomable in  ourselves,  and  feel  that  we  are 
superior  to  the  might  of  the  storm,  or  the  moun- 
tain or  the  cataract.  Nowhere  is  this  truer  than 
when  man  —  man  in  his  full,  rich  powers  —  is 
confronted  by  death.  Instead  of  cringing  in  fear, 
he  rises  to  an  unaccustomed  height  of  greatness 
and  is  utterly  superior  to  death  and  aware  of 
some  quality  of  being  in  himself  which  death  can- 
not touch.  It  is  just  then  in  that  moment  of  seem- 
ing disaster  and  dissolution  that  a  brave,  good  man 
is  most  triumphant  and  ready  to  burn  all  bridges 
behind  him  in  his  great  adventure.  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing, all  her  life  an  invalid,  says  about  this  so- 
called  gigantic  enemy:  "I  cannot  look  on  the 
earthside  of  death.  When  I  look  deathwards  I 
look  over  death  and  upwards."  Her  husband, 
who  was  "  ever  a  fighter,"  has  this  way  of  an- 
nouncing the  triumph : 

"  And  then  as,  'mid  the  dark,  a  gleam 
Of  yet  another  morning  breaks, 

And  like  the  hand  which  ends  a  dream, 
Death,  with  the  might  of  his  sunbeam, 
Touches  the  flesh  and  the  soul  awakes."  x 

i.'The  Flight  of  the  Duchess." 


126    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

Here  is  the  testimony  of  a  French  soldier  who 
writes  at  a  moment  when  death  is  close  beside  him: 
"  I  had  often  known  the  joy  of  seeing  a  spring 
come  like  this,  but  never  before  had  I  been  given 
the  power  of  living  in  every  instant.  So  it  is  that 
one  wins,  without  the  help  of  any  science,  a  vague 
but  indisputable  intuition  of  the  Absolute.  .  .  . 
These  are  hours  of  such  beauty  that  he  who  em- 
braces them  knows  not  what  death  means." 

Having  come  upon  the  higher  values  of  per- 
sonal life  which  death  has  forced  upon  us  we  can 
never  again,  as  men,  be  satisfied  with  such  facts 
of  survival  as  may  come  to  light  through  dreams, 
hallucinations,  telepathy  and  mediums,  or  in  fact 
through  any  empirical  experiences.  Even  if  the 
evidence  were  vastly  greater  than  it  is  for  some 
form  of  animistic  survival,  it  would  fall  far  short 
of  our  moral  and  spiritual  demands.  We  already 
have  some  intimations  in  us  of  "  the  power  of  an 
endless  life,"  and  we  seek  for  a  chance  to  bring  it 
full  into  play,  for  the  "  heavenly  period "  to 
"  perfect  the  earthen,"  for  an  ampler  life  that  will 
reveal  what  we  have  all  the  time  meant  life  to  be. 

Winifred  Kirkland  in  The  New  Death  well 
says:  "The  New  Death,  i.e.,  the  new  view  of 
death,  is  the  perception  of  our  mortal  end  as  the 
mere  portal  of  an  eternal  progression  and  the 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       127 

immediate  result  is  the  consecration  of  all  liv- 
ing. ...  It  is  a  new  illumination,  a  New  Death, 
when  dying  can  be  the  greatest  inspiration  of  our 
everyday  energy,  the  strongest  impulse  toward 
daily  joy." 

II 

THE  NEW  BORN  OUT  OF  THE  OLD 

Walking  across  the  fields  in  the  spring  I  found 
the  empty  shell  of  a  bird's  egg.  The  tiny  bird 
that  once  was  in  it  was  lying  still  and  happy  under 
its  mother's  wings,  or  was  chirping  its  new-born 
song  from  the  limb  of  a  nearby  tree,  or  was  try- 
ing its  new-found  wings  on  the  buoyant  air.  The 
empty  shell  was  utterly  worthless,  a  mere  play- 
thing for  the  wind.  The  miracle  of  life  that  had 
stirred  within  it  and  had  used  it  for  its  shelter 
had  gone  on  and  left  it  deserted.  There  is  a  fine 
proverb  which  says,  "  God  empties  the  nest  by 
hatching  out  the  eggs,"  and  the  world  is  full  of 
this  gentle,  silent,  divine  method  of  abolishing 
the  old  by  setting  free  to  higher  ends  all  that  was 
true  and  living  in  it. 

"  To-day  I  saw  the  dragon-fly 
Come  from  the  wells  where  he  did  lie. 


128     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

An  inner  impulse  rent  the  veil 
Of  his  old  husk:  from  head  to  tail 
Came  out  clear  plates  of  sapphire  mail. 
He  dried  his  wings:  like  gauze  they  grew; 
Through  crofts  and  pastures  wet  with  dew 
A  living  flash  of  light  he  flew." 

In  the  water  below,  the  "  old  husk  "  lay  empty 
and  useless,  while  the  bright-colored  living  thing 
found  its  freedom  in  the  invisible  air.  I  never 
go  to  a  funeral  without  thinking  of  this  miracle 
of  transformation  which  brings  the  bird  out  of 
the  egg,  the  flower  out  of  the  seed,  the  dragon- 
fly out  of  its  water-larva.  In  his  own  mysterious 
way  God  has  emptied  the  nest  by  the  hatching 
method,  and  all  that  was  excellent,  lovable,  and 
permanent  in  the  one  we  loved  has  found  itself 
in  the  realm  for  which  it  was  fitted.  The  body 
is  only  the  empty  shell,  the  shattered  seed,  the 
old  husk,  which  the  silent  forces  of  nature  will 
slowly  turn  back  again  into  its  original  elements, 
to  use  over  again  for  its  myriad  processes  of 
building: 

"  And  from  his  ashes  may  be  made 
The  violet  of   his  native  land." 

Those  who   treasure   up   the   outworn   dust  and 
ashes,  who  make  their  thoughts  center  about  the 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       129 

empty  shell,  are  failing  to  read  aright  the  deeper 
fact,  which  life  everywhere  is  trying  to  utter,  that 
that  which  belongs  in  the  higher  sphere  cannot 
be  pent  up  in  the  lower. 

This  divine  hatching  method  may  be  seen,  too, 
in  the  progress  of  truth,  as  it  unfolds  from  stage 
to  stage.  Nothing  is  more  common  than  to  see 
a  person  holding  on  to  a  shell  in  which  truth  has 
dwelt,  without  realizing  that  the  precious  thing 
he  wants  has  gone  on  and  reembodied  itself  in 
new  and  living  ways  which  he  fails  to  follow  and 
comprehend.  While  he  is  saying  in  melancholy 
tones,  "  They  have  taken  away  my  Lord  and  I 
know  not  where  they  have  laid  him,"  the  living 
Lord  is  saying,  "  Have  I  been  so  long  time  with 
thee  and  yet  dost  thou  not  know  me?" 

Truth  can  no  more  keep  a  fixed  and  perma- 
nent form  than  life  can.  It  lives  only  by  hatch- 
ing out  into  higher  and  ever  more  adequate  ex- 
pressions of  itself,  and  the  old  forms  in  which  it 
lived,  the  old  words  through  wThich  it  uttered 
itself,  become  empty  and  hollow  because  the  warm 
breath  of  God  has  raised  the  inner  life,  the  spir- 
itual reality,  to  a  higher  form  of  expression. 

The  writer  of  the  Epistle  to  the  Hebrews  was 
very  much  impressed  with  this  crumbling  of  old 
forms  and  expressions  to  give  place  to  the  new. 


130    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

God  spoke,  he  says,  to  our  fathers  in  sundered 
portions  and  in  a  variety  of  manners,  but  he  is 
speaking  to  us  now  by  his  Son.  The  things  that 
can  be  shaken,  he  writes,  are  being  removed  that 
the  things  which  cannot  be  shaken  may  remain. 
Luther  must  have  felt  this  shaking  process  in  his 
day;  and  when  he  saw  the  old  forms  of  religion 
crumbling,  he  wrote  that  great  hymn  of  the 
Reformation,  "  A  Mighty  Fortress  is  Our  God." 
He  had  found  something  that  could  not  be  shaken. 
He  could  stand  his  ground  and  face  the  seen  and 
unseen  world  in  faith,  because  he  knew  that  the 
hatching  was  going  on,  and  the  new  was  being 
born  in  higher,  truer,  and  more  adequate  forms 
as  the  old  was  vanishing. 

Let  us  hope  that  this  ancient  divine  method 
may  still  operate  in  this  momentous  hour  of  hu- 
man history.  Never,  perhaps,  since  the  fall  of 
Rome,  has  there  been  such  a  world-shaking  pro- 
cess affecting  every  country  and  all  peoples.  Im- 
mense changes  are  under  way.  Nothing  will  ever 
be  quite  the  same  again.  The  old  is  vanish- 
ing before  our  eyes  and  the  new  is  being  born. 
So  much  was  wrong  and  outworn,  and  unjust  and 
inhuman,  that  the  changes  must  go  very  far,  and 
they  will  necessarily  involve  some  breakage.  But 
even  now,  in  this  most  dynamic  period  of  modern 


THE  LIGHT-FRINGED  MYSTERY       131 

history,  that  which  is  to  mark  permanent  prog- 
ress will  come  forth,  not  by  a  smashing  process, 
but  by  the  hatching  of  the  eggs,  by  the  emergence 
of  the  underlying  forces  of  life  and  the  realization 
of  those  human  hopes  and  aspirations  that  have 
long  been  held  in  and  suppressed. 

There  is  always  the  gravest  danger  from  blind 
rage  and  sullen  wrath.  The  passionate  resent- 
ment for  the  suffering  of  immemorial  wrongs, 
when  once  it  breaks  through  the  dams  of  re- 
straint, is  an  almost  irresistible  force;  but  sooner 
or  later  the  sound,  serious  sense  of  the  intelligent 
human  race  comes  into  play  and  brings  the  world 
back  to  order  and  system.  The  real  gains  in 
these  crises  are  made  not  by  the  smashings  and 
the  blind  iconoclastic  blows,  but  by  the  wise,  clear- 
sighted fulfillment  of  the  slowly  formed  ideals 
which  have  been  the  inspiration  of  many  lives 
before  the  crisis  came.  May  it  be  so  now!  It 
must  not  be,  it  cannot  be,  that  these  millions  of 
men  shall  have  unavailingly  faced  death  and 
mutilation.  It  was  not  wreckage  and  chaos  they 
sought  in  their  brave  adventure  with  death.  They 
went  out  to  build  a  new  world  and  to  destroy,  only 
that  a  new  re-creation  might  begin.  This  is  the 
time  of  incubation  and  birth,  for  ripening  into 
reality  those  mighty  hopes  that  make  us  men. 


132     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

It  means  at  once  that  we  must  deepen  down 
our  lives  into  the  life  of  God,  that  we  must  sup- 
press our  petty  individual  passions  and  feel  the 
sweep  of  God's  purposes  for  the  new  age.  In  a 
multitude  of  ways  the  world  moves  on,  and  as  it 
moves  the  Spirit  of  God  ends  old  forms  and 
methods  and  brings  fresh  and  living  ways  to  light. 
May  we  have  eyes  to  see  what  is  of  his  divine 
hatching  and  what  is  empty  shell! 


CHAPTER  IX 
THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD 

I 

The  revival  of  mysticism  which  has  been  one 
of  the  noteworthy  features  in  the  Christianity  of 
our  time  has  presented  us  with  a  number  of  in- 
teresting and  important  questions.  We  want  to 
know,  first  of  all,  what  mysticism  really  is.  Sec- 
ondly, we  want  to  know  whether  it  is  a  normal 
or  abnormal  experience.  And  omitting  many 
other  questions  which  must  wait  their  turn,  we 
want  to  know  whether  mystical  experiences 
actually  enlarge  our  sphere  of  knowledge,  i.  e., 
whether  they  are  trustworthy  sources  of  authentic 
information  and  authoritative  truth  concerning 
realities  which  lie  beyond  the  range  of  human 
senses. 

The  answer  to  the  first  question  appears  to  be 
as  difficult  to  accomplish  as  the  return  of  Ulysses 
was.  The  secret  is  kept  in  book  after  book. 
One  can  marshall  a  formidable  array  of  defini- 
tions, but  they  oppose  and  challenge  one  another, 

133 


134     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

like  the  men  sprung  from  the  dragon's  teeth.  For 
the  purposes  of  the  present  consideration  we  can 
eliminate  what  is  usually  included  under  psychical 
phenomena,  that  is,  the  phenomena  of  dreams, 
visions  and  trances,  hysteria  and  dissociation  and 
esoteric  and  occult  phenomena.  Thirty  years 
ago  Professor  Royce  said:  "In  the  Father's 
house  are  many  mansions,  and  their  furniture  is 
extremely  manifold.  Astral  bodies  and  palmistry, 
trances  and  mental  healing,  communications  from 
the  dead  and  '  phantasms  of  the  living '  —  such 
things  are  for  some  people  to-day  the  sole  quite 
unmistakable  evidences  of  the  supremacy  of  the 
spiritual  world."  These  phenomena  are  worthy 
of  careful  painstaking  study  and  attention,  for 
they  will  eventually  throw  much  light  upon  the 
deep  and  complex  nature  of  human  personality, 
are  in  fact  already  throwing  much  light  upon  it. 
But  they  furnish  us  slender  data  for  understand- 
ing what  is  properly  meant  by  mystical  experience 
and  its  religious  and  spiritual  bearing. 

We  can,  too,  leave  on  one  side  the  metaphysi- 
cal doctrines  which  fill  a  large  amount  of  space 
in  the  books  of  the  great  mystics.  These  doc- 
trines had  a  long  historical  development  and  they 
would  have  taken  essentially  the  same  form  if  the 
exponents  of  them  had  not  been  mystics.      Mys^ 


THE  MYSTICS  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD     135 

tical  experience  is  confined  to  no  one  form  of 
philosophy,  though  some  ways  of  thinking  no 
doubt  favor  and  other  ways  retard  the  experi- 
ence, as  they  also  often  do  in  the  case  of  religious 
faith  in  general.  Mystical  experience,  further- 
more, must  not  be  confused  with  what  technical  ex- 
pert writers  call  "  the  mystic  way."  There  are  as 
many  mystical  "  ways  "  as  there  are  gates  to  the 
New  Jerusalem:  "On  the  east  three  gates,  on 
the  north  three  gates,  on  the  south  three  gates, 
and  on  the  west  three  gates."  One  might  as  well 
try  to  describe  the  way  of  making  love,  or  the  way 
of  appreciating  the  grand  canyon  as  to  describe 
the  way  to  the  discovery  of  God,  as  though  there 
were  only  one  way. 

I  am  not  interested  in  mysticism  as  an  ism. 
It  turns  out  in  most  accounts  to  be  a  dry  and  ab- 
stract thing,  hardly  more  like  the  warm  and  in- 
timate experience  than  the  color  of  a  map  is  like 
the  country  for  which  it  stands.  "  Canada  is  very 
pink,"  seems  quite  an  inadequate  description  of 
the  noble  country  north  of  our  border.  It  is 
mystical  experience  and  not  mysticism  that  is 
worthy  of  our  study.  We  are  concerned  with  the 
experience  itself,  not  with  second-hand  formula- 
tions of  it.  "  The  mystic,"  says  Professor 
Royce,  "  is  a  thorough-going  empiricist;  "  "  God 


136     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

ceases  to  be  an  object  and  becomes  an  experience," 
says  Professor  Pringle-Pattison.  If  it  is  an  ex- 
perience we  want  to  find  out  what  happens  to  the 
mystic  himself  inside  where  he  lives.  According 
to  those  who  have  been  there  the  experience  which 
we  call  mystical  is  charged  with  the  conviction  of 
real,  direct  contact  and  commerce  with  God.  It 
is  the  almost  universal  testimony  of  those  who 
are  mystics  that  they  find  God  through  their  ex- 
perience. John  Tauler  says  that  in  his  best  mo- 
ments of  "  devout  prayer  and  the  uplifting  of 
the  mind  to  God,"  he  experiences  "  the  pure  pres- 
ence of  God  in  his  own  soul,"  but  he  adds  that  all 
he  can  tell  others  about  the  experience  is  "  as  poor 
and  unlike  it  as  the  point  of  a  needle  is  to  the 
heavens  above  us."     "  I  have  met  with  my  God; 

I  have  met  with  my  Savior.  I  have  felt  the 
healings  drop  upon  my  soul  from  under  His 
wings,"  says  Isaac  Penington  in  the  joy  of  his 
first  mystical  experience.  Without  needlessly 
multiplying  such  testimonies  for  data,  we  can  say 
with  considerable  assurance  that  mystical  experi- 
ence is  consciousness  of  direct  and  immediate  re- 
lationship with  some  transcendent  reality  which 
in  the  moment  of  experience  is  believed  to  be  God. 

II  This  is  He,  this  is  He,"  exclaims  Isaac  Pening- 
ton, "  there  is  no  other:  This  is  He  whom  I  have 


THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD     137 

waited  for  and  sought  after  from  my  childhood." 
Angela  of  Foligno  says  that  she  experienced  God, 
and  saw  that  the  whole  world  was  full  of  God. 

II 

There  are  many  different  degrees  of  intensity, 
concentration  and  conviction  in  the  experiences  of 
different  individual  mystics,  and  also  in  the  vari- 
ous experiences  of  the  same  individual  from  time 
to  time.  There  has  been  a  tendency  in  most 
studies  of  mysticism  to  regard  the  state  of  ecstasy 
as  par  excellence  mystical  experience.  That  is, 
however,  a  grave  mistake.  The  calmer,  more 
meditative,  less  emotional,  less  ecstatic  experi- 
ences of  God  are  not  less  convincing  and  possess 
greater  constructive  value  for  life  and  character 
than  do  ecstatic  experiences  which  presuppose  a 
peculiar  psychical  frame  and  disposition.  The 
seasoned  Quaker  in  the  corporate  hush  and  still- 
ness of  a  silent  meeting  is  far  removed  from  ec- 
stasy, but  he  is  not  the  less  convinced  that  he  is 
meeting  with  God.  For  the  essentia  of  mysti- 
cism we  do  not  need  to  insist  upon  a  certain  "sa- 
cred" mystic  way  nor  upon  ecstasy,  nor  upon  any 
peculiar  type  of  rare  psychic  upheavals.  We  do 
need  to  insist,  however,  upon  a  consciousness  of 


138    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

commerce  with  God  amounting  to  conviction  of 
his  presence. 

'  Where  one  heard  noise 
And  one  saw  flame, 
I  only  knew   He  named  my  name." 

Jacob  Boehme  calls  the  experience  which  came 
to  him,  "  breaking  through  the  gate,"  into  "  a 
new  birth  or  resurrection  from  the  dead,"  so  that, 
he  says,  "  I  knew  God."  "  I  am  certain,"  says 
Eckhart,  "  as  certain  as  that  I  live,  that  nothing 
is  so  near  to  me  as  God.  God  is  nearer  to  me 
than  I  am  to  myself."  One  of  these  experiences 
—  the  first  one  —  was  an  ecstasy,  and  the  other, 
so  far  as  we  can  tell,  was  not.  It  was  the  flood- 
ing in  of  a  moment  of  God-consciousness  in  the 
act  of  preaching  a  sermon  to  the  common  people 
of  Cologne.  The  experience  of  Penington, 
again,  was  not  an  ecstasy;  it  was  the  vital  surge 
of  fresh  life  on  the  first  occasion  of  hearing 
George  Fox  preach  after  a  long  period  of  waiting 
silence.  A  simple  normal  case  of  a  mild  type  is 
given  in  a  little  book  of  recent  date,  reprinted 
from  the  Atlantic  Monthly:  "  After  a  long  time 
of  jangling  conflict  and  inner  misery,  I  one  day, 
quite  quietly  and  with  no  conscious  effort, 
stopped  doing  the  dis-ingenuous  thing  [I  had  been 


THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD     139 

doing].  Then  the  marvel  happened.  It  was  as 
if  a  great  rubber  band  which  had  been  stretched 
almost  to  the  breaking  point  were  suddenly  re- 
leased and  snapped  back  to  its  normal  condition. 
Heaven  and  earth  were  changed  for  me.  Every- 
thing was  glorious  because  of  its  relation  to  some 
great  central  life — nothing  seemed  to  matter  but 
that  life."  Brother  Lawrence,  a  barefooted  lay- 
brother  of  the  seventeenth  century,  according  to 
the  testimony  of  the  brotherhood,  attained  "  an 
unbroken  and  undisturbed  sense  of  the  Presence 
of  God."  He  was  not  an  ecstatic;  he  was  a  quiet, 
faithful  man  who  did  his  ordinary  daily  tasks 
with  what  seemed  to  his  friends  "  an  unclouded 
vision,  an  illuminated  love  and  an  uninterrupted 
joy."  Simple  and  humble  though  he  was,  he 
nevertheless  acquired,  through  his  experience  of 
God,  "  an  extraordinary  spaciousness  of  mind." 
The  more  normal,  expansive  mystical  experi- 
ences come  apparently  when  the  personal  self  is 
at  its  best.  Its  powers  and  capacities  are  raised 
to  an  unusual  unity  and  fused  together.  The 
whole  being,  with  its  accumulated  submerged  life, 
finds  itself.  The  process  of  preparing  for  any 
high  achievement  is  a  severe  and  laborious  one, 
but  nothing  seems  easier  in  the  moment  of  suc- 
cess than  is   the   accomplishment   for  which  the 


Ho    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

life  has  been  prepared.  There  comes  to  be 
formed  within  the  person  what  Aristotle  called 
"  a  dexterity  of  soul,"  so  that  the  person  does 
with  ease  what  he  has  become  skilled  to  do. 
Clement  of  Alexandria  called  a  fully  organized 
and  spiritualized  person  "  a  harmonized  man," 
that  is,  adjusted,  organized  and  ready  to  be  a 
transmissive  organ  for  the  revelation  of  God. 
Brother  Lawrence,  who  was  thus  "  harmonized," 
finely  says,  "  The  most  excellent  method  which  I 
found  of  going  to  God  was  that  of  doing  my  com- 
mon business,  purely  for  the  love  of  God."  An 
earlier  mystic  of  the  fourteenth  century  stated  the 
same  principle  in  these  words:  "  It  is  my  aim  to 
be  to  the  Eternal  God  what  a  man's  hand  is  to 


a  man." 


There  are  many  human  experiences  which  carry 
a  man  up  to  levels  where  he  has  not  usually  been 
before  and  where  he  finds  himself  possessed  of 
insight  and  energies  he  had  hardly  suspected  were 
his  until  that  moment.  One  leaps  to  his  full 
height  when  the  right  inner  spring  is  reached.  We 
are  quite  familiar  with  the  way  in  which  instinc- 
tive tendencies  in  us  and  emotions  both  egoistic 
and  social,  become  organized  under  a  group  of 
ideas  and  ideals  into  a  single  system  which  we 
call  a  sentiment,  such  as  love,  or  patriotism,  or 


THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD    141 

devotion  to  truth.  It  forms  slowly  and  one  hardly 
realizes  that  it  has  formed  until  some  occasion 
unexpectedly  brings  it  into  full  operation,  and 
we  find  ourselves  able  with  perfect  ease  to  over- 
come the  most  powerful  inhibitory  and  opposing 
instincts  and  habits,  which,  until  then,  had  usually 
controlled  us.  We  are  familiar,  too,  wTith  the 
way  in  which  a  well-trained  and  disciplined  mind, 
confronted  by  a  concrete  situation,  will  sometimes 
—  alas  not  always  —  in  a  sudden  flash  of  imagi- 
native insight,  discover  a  universal  law  revealed 
there  and  then  in  the  single  phenomenon,  as  Sir 
Isaac  Newton  did  and  as,  in  a  no  less  striking  way, 
Sir  William  Rowan  Hamilton  did  in  his  discovery 
of  Quaternions.  Literary  and  artistic  geniuses 
supply  us  writh  many  instances  in  which,  in  a  sud- 
den flash,  the  crude  material  at  hand  is  shot 
through  with  vision,  and  the  complicated  plot  of 
a  drama,  the  full  significance  of  a  character,  or 
the  complete  glory  of  a  statue  stands  revealed,  as 
though,  to  use  R.  L.  Stevenson's  illustration,  a 
genie  had  brought  it  on  a  golden  tray  as  a  gift 
from  another  wrorld.  Abraham  Lincoln,  striking 
off  in  a  few  intense  minutes  his  Gettysburg  ad- 
dress, as  beautiful  in  style  and  perfect  in  form 
as  anything  in  human  literature,  is  as  good  an  il- 
lustration as  we  need  of  the  way  in  which  a  highly 


142     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

organized  person,  by  a  kindling  flash,  has  at  his 
hand  all  the  moral  and  spiritual  gains  of  a  life 
time. 

There  is  a  famous  account  of  the  flash  of  inspi- 
ration given  by  Philo,  which  can  hardly  be  im- 
proved. It  is  as  follows:  "  I  am  not  ashamed  to 
recount  my  own  experience.  At  times,  when  I 
have  proposed  to  enter  upon  my  wonted  task  of 
writing  on  philosophical  doctrines,  with  an  exact 
knowledge  of  the  materials  which  were  to  be  put 
together,  I  have  had  to  leave  off  without  any  work 
accomplished,  finding  my  mind  barren  and  fruit- 
less, and  upbraiding  it  for  its  self-complacency, 
while  startled  at  the  might  of  the  Existent  One, 
in  whose  power  it  lies  to  open  and  close  the  wombs 
of  the  soul.  But  at  other  times,  when  I  had  come 
empty,  all  of  a  sudden  I  have  been  filled  with 
thoughts,  showered  down  and  sown  upon  me  un- 
seen from  above,  so  that  by  Divine  possession  I 
have  fallen  into  a  rapture  and  become  ignorant 
of  everything,  the  place,  those  present,  myself, 
what  was  spoken  or  written.  For  I  have  received 
a  stream  of  interpretation,  a  fruition  of  light,  the 
most  clear-cut  sharpness  of  vision,  the  most 
vividly  distinct  view  of  the  matter  before  me, 
such  as  might  be  received  through  the  eyes  from 
the  most  luminous  presentation." 


THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD     143 

The  most  important  mystical  experiences  are 
something  like  that.  They  occur  usually  not  at 
the  beginning  of  the  religious  life  but  rather  in 
the  ripe  and  developed  stage  of  it.  They  are  the 
fruit  of  long-maturing  processes.  Clement's  "  the 
harmonized  man  "  is  always  a  person  who  has 
brought  his  soul  into  parallelism  with  divine  cur- 
rents, has  habitually  practiced  his  religious  in- 
sights and  has  finally  formed  a  unified  central 
self,  subtly  sensitive,  acutely  responsive  to  the 
Beyond  within  him.  In  such  experiences  which 
may  come  suddenly  or  may  come  as  a  more  grad- 
ual process,  the  whole  self  operates  and  masses 
all  the  cumulations  of  a  lifetime.  They  are  no 
more  emotional  than  they  are  rational  and  vo- 
litional. We  have  a  total  personality,  awake,  ac- 
tive, and  "  aware  of  his  life's  flow."  Instead  of 
seeing  in  a  flash  a  law  of  gravitation,  or  the  plot 
and  character  of  Hamlet,  or  the  uncarven  form  of 
Moses  the  Law-giver  in  a  block  of  marble,  one 
sees  at  such  times  the  moral  demonstrations  of  a 
lifetime  and  vividly  feels  the  implications  that  are 
essentially  involved  in  a  spiritual  life.  In  the  high 
moment  God  is  seen  to  be  as  sure  as  the  soul  is. 

"  I  stood  at  Naples  once,  a  night  so  dark 
I  could  have  scarce  conjectured  there  was  earth 
Anywhere,  sky  or  sea  or  world  at  all : 


i44    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

But  the  night's  black  was  burst  through  by  a  blaze  — 
Thunder  struck  blow  on  blow,  earth  groaned  and  bore, 
Through  her  whole  length  of  mountain  visible: 
There  lay  the  city  thick  and  plain  with  spires, 
And,  like  a  ghost  disshrouded,  white  the  sea. 
So  may  the  truth  be  flashed  out  by  one  blow." 

To  some  the  truth  of  God  never  comes  closer 
than  a  logical  conclusion.  He  is  held  to  be  as  a 
living  item  in  a  creed.  To  the  mystic  he  becomes 
real  in  the  same  sense  that  experienced  beauty  is 
real,  or  the  feel  of  spring  is  real,  or  that  summer 
sunlight  is  real  —  he  has  been  found,  he  has 
been  met,  he  is  present. 

Before  discussing  the  crucial  question  whether 
these  experiences  are  evidential  and  are  worthy  of 
consideration  as  an  addition  to  the  world's  stock 
of  truth  and  knowledge  I  must  say  a  few  words 
about  the  normality  or  abnormality  of  them. 
Nothing  of  any  value  can  be  said  on  this  point 
of  mystical  experience  in  the  abstract.  One  must 
first  catch  his  concrete  case.  Some  instances  are 
normal  and  some  are  undoubtedly  abnormal. 
Trance,  ecstasy  and  rapture  are  unusual  experi- 
ences and  in  that  sense  not  normal  occurrences. 
They  usually  indicate,  furthermore,  a  pathologi- 
cal condition  of  personality  and  are  thus  abnormal 
in  the  more  technical  sense.     There  is,  however, 


THE  MYSTICS  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD     145 

something  more  to  be  said  on  this  point.  It  seems 
pretty  well  established  that  some  persons  —  and 
they  have  often  been  creative  leaders  and  religious 
geniuses  —  have  succeeded  in  organizing  their 
lives,  in  finding  their  trail,  in  charging  their  whole 
personality  with  power,  in  attaining  a  moral  dy- 
namic and  in  tapping  vast  reservoirs  of  energy  by 
means  of  states  which,  if  occurring  in  other  per- 
sons, would  no  doubt  be  called  pathological.  The 
real  test  here  is  a  pragmatic  one.  It  seems  hardly 
sound  to  call  a  state  abnormal  if  it  has  raised  the 
experiencer,  as  a  mystic  experience  often  does,  into 
a  hundred  horse-power  man  and  through  his  in- 
fluence has  turned  multitudes  of  other  men  and 
women  into  more  joyous,  hopeful  and  efficient  per- 
sons. This  question  of  abnormality  and  reality  is 
thus  not  one  to  be  settled  off-hand  by  a  super- 
ficial diagnosis. 

An  experience  which  brings  spaciousness  of 
mind,  new  interior  dimensions,  ability  to  stand  the 
universe  —  and  the  people  in  it  —  and  capacity 
to  work  at  human  tasks  with  patience,  endurance 
and  wisdom  may  quite  intelligently  be  called  nor- 
mal, though  to  an  external  beholder  it  may  look 
like  what  he  usually  calls  a  trance  of  hysteria,  a 
state  of  dissociation,  or  hypnosis  by  auto-sugges- 
tion.    It  should  be  added,  however,   as  I   have 


146    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

already  said,  that  mystical  experience  is  not  con- 
fined to  these  extremer  types.  They  may  or  may 
not  be  pathological.  The  calmer  and  more  re- 
strained stages  of  mysticism  are  more  important 
and  significant  and  are  no  more  marked  with  the 
stigma  of  hysteria  than  is  love-making,  enjoyment 
of  music,  devotion  to  altruistic  causes,  risking 
one's  life  for  country,  or  any  lofty  experience  of 
value. 

Ill 

We  come  at  length  to  the  central  question  of 
our* consideration:  Do  mystical  experiences  settle 
anything?  Are  they  purely  subjective  and  one- 
sided, or  do  they  prove  to  have  objective  refer- 
ence and  so  to  be  two-sided?  Do  they  take  the 
experiencer  across  the  chasm  that  separates 
"  self  "  from  "  Other  "  ?  Mystical  experience  un- 
doubtedly feels  as  though  it  had  objective  refer- 
ence. It  comes  to  the  individual  with  indubitable 
authority.  He  is  certain  that  he  has  found  some 
thing  other  than  himself.  He  has  an  unescapable 
conviction  that  he  is  in  contact  and  commerce  with 
reality  beyond  the  margins  of  his  personal  self. 
"  A  tremendous  muchness  is  suddenly  revealed," 
as  William  James  once  put  it. 

We  do  not  get  very  far  when  we  undertake  to 


THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD    147 

reduce  knowledge  to  an  affair  of  sense-experience. 
11  They  reckon  ill  who  leave  me  out,"  can  be  said 
by  the  organized,  personal,  creative  mind  as  truly 
as  by  Brahma.  There  are  many  forms  of  human 
experience  in  which  the  data  of  the  senses  are  so 
vastly  transcended  that  they  fail  to  furnish  any 
real  explanation  of  what  occurs  in  consciousness. 
This  is  true  of  all  our  experiences  of  value,  which 
apparently  spring  out  of  synthetic  or  synoptic  ac- 
tivities of  the  mind,  i.  e.,  activities  in  which  the 
mind  is  unified  and  creative.  The  vibrations  of 
ether  which  bombard  the  rods  and  cones  of  the 
retina  may  be  the  occasion  for  the  appreciation  of 
beauty  in  sky  or  sea  or  flower,  but  they  are  surely 
not  the  cause  of  it.  The  concrete  event  which 
confronts  me  is  very  likely  the  occasion  for  the 
august  pronouncement  of  moral  issues  which  my 
conscience  makes,  but  it  can  not  be  said  that  the 
concrete  event  in  any  proper  sense  causes  this 
consciousness  of  moral  obligation.  The  famous 
answer  of  Leibnitz  to  the  crude  sense-philosophy 
of  his  time  is  still  cogent.  To  the  phrase :  "  There 
is  nothing  in  the  mind  that  has  not  come  through 
the  senses,"  Leibnitz  added,  "  except  the  mind  it- 
self." That  means  that  the  creative  activity  of 
the  mind  is  always  an  important  factor  in  ex- 
perience and  one  that  can  not  be  ignored  in  any 


148     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

of  the  processes  of  knowledge.  Unfortunately  we 
have  done  very  little  yet  in  the  direction  of  com- 
prehending the  interior  depth  of  the  personal 
mind  or  of  estimating  adequately  the  part  which 
mind  itself  in  its  creative  capacity  plays  in  all 
knowledge  functions.  It  will  only  be  when  we 
have  succeeded  in  getting  beyond  what  Plato 
called  the  bird-cage  theory  of  knowledge  to  a 
sound  theory  of  knowledge  and  to  a  solid  basis 
for  spiritual  values  that  we  shall  be  able  to  dis- 
cuss intelligently  the  "  findings  "  of  the  mystic. 

The  world  at  the  present  moment  is  pitiably 
"  short  "  in  its  stock  of  sound  theories  of  knowl- 
edge. The  prevailing  psychologies  do  not  ex- 
plain knowledge  at  all.  The  behaviorists  do  not 
try  to  explain  it  any  more  than  the  astronomer  or 
the  physicist  does.  The  psychologist  who  reduces 
mind  to  an  aggregation  of  describable  "  mind- 
states  "  has  started  out  on  a  course  which  makes 
an  explanation  forever  impossible,  since  knowl- 
edge can  be  explained  only  through  unity  and  in- 
tegral wholeness,  never  through  an  aggregation 
of  parts,  as  though  it  were  a  mental  "  shower  of 
shot."  If  we  expect  to  talk  about  knowledge  and 
seriously  propose  to  use  that  great  word  truth, 
we  must  at  least  begin  with  the  assumption  of 
an  intelligent,  creative,  organizing  center  of  self- 


THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD     149 

consciousness  which  can  transcend  itself  and  can 
know  what  is  beyond  and  other  than  itself.  In 
short,  the  talk  about  a  "  chasm  "  between  subject 
and  object  —  knower  and  thing  known  —  is  as 
absurd  as  it  would  be  to  talk  of  a  chasm  between 
the  convex  and  the  concave  sides  of  a  curve. 
Knowledge  is  always  knowledge  of  an  object  and 
mystical  experience  has  all  the  essential  marks  of 
objective  reference,  as  certainly  as  other  forms 
of  experience  have. 

Professor  J.  M.  Baldwin  very  wTell  says  that 
there  is  a  form  of  contemplation  in  which,  as  in 
aesthetic  experience,  the  strands  of  the  mind's  di- 
verging dualisms  are  "  merged  and  fused"  He 
adds :  "  In  this  experience  of  a  fusion  which  is 
not  a  mixture  but  which  issues  in  a  meaning  of  its 
own  sort  and  kind,  an  experience  whose  essential 
character  is  just  this  unity  of  comprehension,  con- 
sciousness attains  its  completest,  its  most  direct, 
and  its  final  apprehension  of  what  Reality  is  and 
means."  It  really  comes  round  to  the  question 
whether  the  mind  of  a  self-conscious  person  has 
any  way  of  approach,  except  by  way  of  the  senses, 
to  any  kind  of  reality.  There  is  no  a  priori  an- 
swer to  that  question.  It  can  only  be  settled  by 
experience.  It  is,  therefore,  pure  dogmatism  to 
say,  as  Professor  Dunlap  in  his  recent  attack  on 


150    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

mysticism  does,  that  all  conscious  processes  are 
based  on  sense-stimulation  and  all  thought  as  well 
as  perception  depends  on  reaction  to  sense-stimu- 
lus. It  is  no  doubt  true  that  behavior  psychology 
must  resort  to  some  such  formula,  but  that  only 
means  that  such  psychology  is  always  dealing  with 
greatly  transformed  and  reduced  beings,  when  it 
attempts  to  deal  with  persons  like  us  who,  in  the 
richness  of  our  concrete  lives,  are  never  reduced 
to  "  behavior-beings."  We  have  interior  dimen- 
sions and  that  is  the  end  on't !  Some  persons  — 
and  they  are  by  no  means  feeble-minded  individ- 
uals— .are  as  certain  that  they  have  commerce 
with  a  world  within  as  they  are  that  they  have 
experiences  of  a  world  outside  in  space.  Thomas 
Aquinas,  who  neither  in  method  nor  in  doctrine 
leaned  toward  mysticism,  though  he  was  most  cer- 
tainly "  a  harmonized  man,"  and  who  in  theory 
postponed  the  vision  of  God  to  a  realm  beyond 
death,  nevertheless  had  an  experience  two  years 
before  he  died  which  made  him  put  his  pen  and 
inkhorn  on  the  shelf  and  never  write  another  word 
of  his  Summa  Theologiae.  When  he  was  re- 
minded of  the  incomplete  state  of  his  great  work 
and  was  urged  to  go  on  with  it,  he  only  replied, 
"I  have  seen  that  which  makes  all  that  I  have 
written  look  small  to  me." 


THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD    151 

It  may  be  just  possible  that  there  is  a  universe 
of  spiritual  reality  upon  which  our  finite  spirits 
open  inward  as  inlets  open  into  the  sea. 

"  Like  the  tides  on  the  crescent  sea-beach 
When  the  moon  is  new  and  thin 
Into  our  hearts  high  yearnings 
Come  welling  and  surging  in; 
Come  from  that  mystic  ocean 
Whose  rim  no  foot  has  trod. 
Some  call  it  longing 
But  others  call  it  God." 

Such  a  view  is  perfectly  sane  and  tenable;  it  con- 
flicts with  no  proved  and  demonstrated  facts 
either  in  the  nature  of  the  universe  or  of  mind. 
It  seems  anyway  to  the  mystic  that  there  is  such 
a  world,  that  he  has  found  it  as  surely  as  Colum- 
bus found  San  Salvador,  and  that  his  experience 
is  a  truth-telling  experience. 


IV 

But  granting  that  it  is  truth-telling  and  has  ob- 
jective reference,  is  the  mystic  justified  in  claiming 
that  he  has  found  and  knows  God?  One  does  not 
need  to  be  a  very  wide  and  extensive  student  of 
mystical  experience   to   discover  what   a  meager 


152     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

stock  of  knowledge  the  genuine  mystic  reports. 
William  James'  remarkable  experience  in  the 
Adirondack  woods  very  well  illustrates  the  type. 
It  had,  he  says,  "  an  intense  significance  of  some 
sort,  if  one  could  only  tell  the  significance.  .  .  . 
In  point  of  fact,  I  can't  find  a  single  word  for  all 
that  significance  and  don't  know  what  it  was  sig- 
nificant of,  so  that  it  remains  a  mere  boulder  of 
impression."  x  At  a  later  date  James  refers  to 
that  "  extraordinary  vivacity  of  man's  psychologi- 
cal commerce  with  something  ideal  that  feels  as  if 
it  were  also  actual."  2  The  greatest  of  all  the 
fourteenth  century  mystics,  Meister  Eckhart, 
could  not  put  his  impression  into  words  or  ideas. 
What  he  found  was  a  "  wilderness  of  the  God- 
head where  no  one  is  at  home,"  i.  e.,  an  Object 
with  no  particular  differentiated,  concrete  char- 
acteristics. It  was  not  an  accident  that  so  many 
of  the  mystics  hit  upon  the  via  negativa,  the  way 
of  negation,  or  that  they  called  their  discovery 
"  the  divine  Dark." 

"  Whatever  your  mind  comes  at 
I  tell  you  flat 
God  is  not  that." 

1  Letters  of  William  James,  Vol.  II.  p.  76. 

2  Ibid,  Vol.  II.  p.  269. 


THE  MYSTICS  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD    153 

Mystical  experience  does  not  supply  concrete  in- 
formation. It  does  not  bring  new  finite  facts,  new 
items  that  can  be  used  in  a  description  of  "  the 
scenery  and  circumstance  "  of  the  realm  beyond 
our  sense  horizons.  It  is  the  awareness  of  a 
Presence,  the  consciousness  of  a  Beyond,  the  dis- 
covery, as  James  puts  it,  that  "  we  are  continu- 
ous with  a  More  of  the  same  quality,  which  in- 
operative in  us  and  in  touch  with  us." 

The  most  striking  effect  of  such  experience  is 
not  new  fact-knowledge,  not  new  items  of  empiri- 
cal information,  but  new  moral  energy,  heightened 
conviction,  increased  caloric  quality,  enlarged 
spiritual  vision,  an  unusual  radiant  power  of  life. 
In  short,  the  whole  personality,  in  the  case  of  the 
constructive  mystics,  appears  to  be  raised  to  a 
new  level  of  life  and  to  have  gained  from  some- 
where many  calories  of  life-feeding,  spiritual  sub- 
stance. We  are  quite  familiar  with  the  way  in 
which  adrenalin  suddenly  flushes  into  the  physical 
system  and  adds  a  new  and  incalculable  power  to 
brain  and  muscle.  Under  its  stimulus  a  man  can 
carry  out  a  piano  when  the  house  is  on  fire.  May 
not,  perhaps,  some  energy  from  some  Source  with 
which  our  spirits  are  allied  flush  our  inner  being 
with  forces  and  powers  by  which  we  can  be  forti- 
fied to  stand  the  universe  and  more  than  stand 


154    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

it!  "  We  are  more  than  conquerors  through  Him 
that  loved  us,"  is  the  way  one  of  the  world's 
greatest  mystics  felt. 

Mystical  experience  —  and  we  must  remember 
as  Santayana  has  said,  that  "  experience  is  like  a 
shrapnel  shell  and  bursts  into  a  thousand  mean- 
ings "  —  does  at  least  one  thing.  It  makes  God 
sure  to  the  person  who  has  had  the  experience. 
It  raises  faith  and  conviction  to  the  nth  power. 
"  The  God  who  said,  '  Let  light  shine  out  of 
darkness,'  has  shined  into  my  heart  to  give  the 
light  of  the  knowledge  of  the  glory  of  God,"  is 
St.  Paul's  testimony.  "  I  knew  God  by  revelation," 
declares  George  Fox.  "  I  was  as  one  who  hath 
the  key  and  doth  open."  "  The  man  who  has  at- 
tained this  felicity,"  Plotinus  says,  "  meets  some 
turn  of  fortune  that  he  would  not  have  chosen,  but 
there  is  not  the  slightest  lessening  of  his  happi- 
ness for  that  "  (En.  I :  iv.7) .  But  this  experience, 
with  its  overwhelming  conviction  and  its  dynamic 
effect,  can  not  be  put  into  the  common  coin  of 
speech.  Frederic  Myers  has  well  expressed  the 
difficulty: 

"  Oh  could  I  tell  ye  surely  would  believe  it! 
Oh  could  I  only  say  what  I  have  seen! 
How  should  I  tell  or  how  can  ye  receive  it, 

How,  till  He  bringeth  you  where  I  have  been  ?  " 


THE  MYSTIC'S  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD    155 

There  is  no  concrete  "  information  "  which  can 
be  shared  with  others. 

When  Columbus  found  San  Salvador  he  was 
able  to  describe  it  to  those  who  did  not  sail  with 
him  in  the  Santa  Maria,  but  when  the  mystic  finds 
God  he  can  not  give  us  any  "  knowledge  "  in  plain 
words  of  everyday  speech.  He  can  only  refer 
to  his  boulder,  or  his  Gibraltar,  of  impression. 
That  situation  is  what  we  should  expect.  We  can 
not,  either,  describe  any  of  our  great  emotions. 
We  can  not  impart  what  flushes  into  our  con- 
sciousness in  moments  of  lofty  intuition.  We 
have  a  submerged  life  within  us  which  is  certainly 
no  less  real  than  our  hand  or  foot.  It  influences 
all  that  we  do  or  say,  but  we  do  not  find  it  easy 
to  utter  it.  In  the  presence  of  the  sublime  we 
have  nothing  to  say  —  or  if  we  do  say  anything 
it  is  a  great  mistake !  Language  is  forged  to  deal 
with  experiences  which  are  common  to  many  per- 
sons, i.  e.,  to  experiences  which  refer  to  objects 
in  space.  We  have  no  vocabulary  for  the  subtle, 
elusive  flashes  of  vision  which  are  unique,  indi- 
vidual and  unsharable,  as  for  instance  is  our  per- 
sonal sense  of  "  the  tender  grace  of  a  day  that 
is  dead."  We  are  forced  in  all  these  matters  to 
resort  to  symbolic  suggestion  and  to  artistic  de- 
vices.   Coventry  Patmore  said  with  much  insight: 


156    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

"  In  divinity  and  love 
What's  best  worth  saying  can't  be  said." 


I  believe  that  mystical  experiences  do  in  the 
long  run  expand  our  knowledge  of  God  and  do 
succeed  in  verifying  themselves.  Mysticism  is  a 
sort  of  spiritual  protoplasm  that  underlies,  as  a 
basic  substance,  much  that  is  best  in  religion,  in 
ethics  and  in  life  itself.  It  has  generally  been  the 
mystic,  the  prophet,  the  seer  that  has  spotted  out 
new  ways  forward  in  the  jungle  of  our  world,  or 
lifted  our  race  to  new  spiritual  levels.  Their  ex- 
periences have  in  some  way  equipped  them  for 
unusual  tasks,  have  given  supplies  of  energy  to 
them  which  their  neighbors  did  not  have,  and 
have  apparently  brought  them  into  vital  corre- 
spondence with  dimensions  and  regions  of  reality 
that  others  miss.  The  proof  that  they  have  found 
God,  or  at  least  a  domain  of  spiritual  reality, 
does  not  lie  in  some  new  stock  of  knowledge,  not 
in  some  gnostic  secret,  which  they  bring  back;  it 
is  to  be  seen  rather  in  the  moral  and  spiritual 
fruits  which  test  out  and  verify  the  experience. 

Consciousness  of  beauty  or  of  truth  or  of  good- 
ness baffles  analysis  as  much  as  consciousness  of 
God  does.  These  values  have  no  objective  stand- 
ing ground  in  current  psychology.     They  are  not 


THE  MYSTICS  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD    157 

things  in  the  world  of  space.  They  submit  to  no 
adequate  casual  explanation.  They  have  their 
ground  of  being  in  some  other  kind  of  world  than 
that  of  the  mechanical  order,  a  world  composed  of 
quantitative  masses  of  matter  in  motion.  These 
experiences  of  value,  which  are  as  real  for  con- 
sciousness as  stone  walls  are,  make  very  clear  the 
fact  that  there  are  depths  and  capacities  in  the  na- 
ture of  the  normal  human  mind  which  we  do  not 
usually  recognize  and  of  which  we  have  scant 
and  imperfect  accounts  in  our  text-books.  Our 
minds  taken  in  their  full  range,  in  other  words, 
have  some  sort  of  contact  and  relationship  with 
an  eternal  nature  of  things  far  deeper  than  atoms 
and  molecules.  Only  very  slowly  and  gradually 
has  the  race  learned  through  finite  symbols  and 
temporal  forms  to  interpret  beauty  and  truth  and 
goodness  which  in  their  essence  are  as  ineffable 
and  indescribable  as  the  mystic's  experience  of 
God  is.  Plato  often  speaks  as  though  he  had 
high  moments  of  experience  when  he  rose  to  the 
naked  vision  of  beauty  —  beauty  "  alone,  sepa- 
rate and  eternal,"  as  he  says,  and  his  myths  are 
very  likely  told,  as  J.  A.  Stewart  believes,  to  as- 
sist others  to  experience  this  same  vision  —  a 
beauty  which  "  does  not  grow  nor  perish,  is  with- 
out increase  or  diminution  and  endures  for  ever- 


158    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

lasting."  But  as  a  matter  of  fact,  however  exalted 
heavenly  and  enduring  beauty  may  be  in  its  es- 
sence we  know  what  it  is  only  as  it  appears  in 
fair  forms  of  objects,  of  body,  of  soul,  of  ac- 
tions; in  harmonious  blending  of  sounds  or  colors; 
in  well-ordered  or  happily-combined  groupings  of 
many  aspects  in  one  unity  which  is  as  it  ought  to 
be.  Truth  and  moral  goodness  always  transcend 
our  attainments  and  we  sometimes  feel  that  the 
very  end  and  goal  of  life  is  the  pursuit  of  that 
truth  or  that  goodness  which  eye  hath  not  seen 
nor  ear  heard.  But  whatever  truth  we  do  attain 
or  whatever  goodness  we  do  achieve  is  always 
concrete.  Truth  is  just  this  one  more  added  fact 
that  resists  all  attempts  to  doubt  it.  Goodness 
is  just  this  simple  every-day  deed  that  reveals  a 
heroic  spirit  and  a  brave  venture  of  faith  in  the 
midst  of  difficulties.  So,  too,  the  mystic  knowl- 
edge of  God  is  not  some  esoteric  communication, 
supplied  through  trance  or  ecstasy;  it  is  an  intui- 
tive personal  touch  with  God,  felt  to  be  the  essen- 
tially real,  the  bursting  forth  of  an  intense  love 
for  him  which  heightens  all  the  capacities  and 
activities  of  life,  followed  by  the  slow  laboratory 
results  which  verify  it.  "All  I  could  never  be" 
now  is.  It  seems  possible  to  stand  the  universe  — 
even  to  do  something  toward  the  transformation 


THE  MYSTICS  EXPERIENCE  OF  GOD    159 

of  it.  The  bans  are  read  for  that  most  difficult 
of  all  marriages,  the  marriage  of  the  possible  with 
the  actual,  the  ideal  with  the  real.  And  if  the 
experience  does  not  prove  that  the  soul  has  found 
God,  it  at  least  does  this:  it  makes  the  soul  feel 
that  proofs  of  God  are  wholly  unnecessary. 


CHAPTER  X 

PSYCHOLOGY  AND  THE  SPIRITUAL  LIFE 

I 

Twenty  years  ago  in  A  Dynamic  Faith,  after 
reviewing  the  new  questions  which  the  great 
sciences  had  raised  for  religion,  I  said:  "  There 
are  still  harder  problems  than  any  of  these.  Psy- 
chology has  opened  a  series  of  questions  which 
make  the  boldest  tremble  for  his  faith  in  an  end- 
less life  or  in  any  spiritual  reality."  The  twenty 
years  that  have  intervened  have  made  my  point 
much  more  clear.  It  is  now  pretty  generally  rec- 
ognized that  the  deepest  issues  of  the  faith  are 
to  be  settled  in  this  field.  The  problem  of  the 
real  nature  of  the  human  soul  is  at  the  present 
moment  probably  the  most  important  religious 
question  before  us,  for  upon  the  answer  to  it  all 
our  vital  spiritual  interests  depend.  If  man  has 
no  unique  interior  domain,  if  he  is  only  a  tiny  bit 
of  that  vast  system  of  naturalism  in  which  every 
curve  of  process  and  development  is  rigidly  de- 
termined by  antecedent  causes,  then  "  spiritual " 

160 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE      161 

is  only  a  high-sounding  word  with  a  metaphorical 
significance,  but  with  no  basis  of  reality  in  the 
nature  of  things.  There  is  certainly  no  "  place  " 
in  the  external  world  of  space  where  we  can  ex- 
pect to  find  spiritual  realities.  They  are  not  to  be 
found  by  going  "  somewhere."  Olympus  has  been 
climbed,  and  it  was  as  naturalistic  as  any  other 
mountain  peak.  Eden  is  only  a  defined  area  of 
Mesopotamia,  and  that  blessed  word  can  work  no 
miracles  for  us  now.  The  dome  of  the  sky  is 
only  an  optical  illusion.  It  is  no  supersensuous 
realm  on  which  we  can  build  our  hopes.  The  be- 
yond as  a  spiritual  reality  is  within,  or  it  is  no- 
where. Psychology,  however,  has  not  been  very 
encouraging  in  promises  of  hope.  It  has  gone 
the  way  of  the  other  sciences  and  has  taken  an 
ever  increasing  slant  toward  naturalism.  The  re- 
sult is  that  most  so-called  "  psychologies  of  re- 
ligion "  reduce  religion  either  to  a  naturalistic 
or  to  a  subjective  basis,  which  means  in  either  case 
that  religion  as  a  way  to  some  objective  spiritual 
reality  has  eluded  us  and  has  disappeared  as  a 
constructive  power.  Many  a  modern  psycholo- 
gist can  say  with  Browning's  Cleon: 

11  And  I  have  written  three  books  on  the  soul, 
Proving  absurd  all  written  hitherto, 
And  putting  us  to  ignorance  again." 


162     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

Two  of  the  main  tendencies  in  what  is  usually 
called  scientific  psychology  are  (i)  the  "  behav- 
iorist "  tendency  and  (2)  the  tendency  to  reduce 
the  inner  life  to  a  series  of  "  mind  states."  Let 
us  consider  behaviorism  first.  This  turns  psy- 
chology into  "  a  purely  objective  experimental 
branch  of  natural  science."  1  It  aims  at  "  the 
prediction  and  control  of  behavior."  "  Introspec- 
tion forms  no  essential  part  of  its  method."  One 
is  not  concerned  with  "  interpretation  in  terms  of 
consciousness,"  one  is  interested  only  in  reactions, 
responses  —  in  short,  in  behavior  in  the  presence 
of  stimuli  which  produce  movements.  The  body 
is  a  complicated  organ  and  "  mind  "  is  merely  a 
convenient  term  to  express  its  "  activities."  2  The 
behaviorist  "  recognizes  no  dividing  line  between 
man  and  brute."  Psychology  becomes  "  the 
science  of  behavior,"  3  the  study  of  "  the  activity 
of  man  or  animal  as  it  can  be  observed  from  the 
outside,  either  with  or  without  attempting  to  de- 
termine the  mental  states  by  inference  from  these 
acts."  Emotions  become  reduced  forthwith  to 
"  the  bodily  resonance  "  set  up  in  the  muscular 
and  visceral  systems  by  instinctive  movements  in 

1  Watson,  Behavior,  p.  1. 

2  See  Ralph  Barton  Perry's  article  "  A  Behavioristic  View 
of  Purpose"  in  the  Journal  of  Philosophy,  February  17,  1921. 

3  Pillsbury,  Fundamentals  of  Psychology,  p.  4. 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE     163 

the  presence  of  objects,  these  curious  movements 
being  due  entirely  to  the  inheritance  of  physio- 
logical structure  adapted  at  least  in  the  early 
stages  to  aid  survival.  There  is  no  way  by  which 
behaviorist  psychology  can  give  any  standing  to 
religion  or  to  any  type  of  spiritual  values.  "  Es- 
thetics is  the  study  of  the  useless,"  as  William 
James  baldly  states  the  case.  Conscience  disap- 
pears or  becomes  another  name  for  the  inheri- 
tance or  acquisition  of  certain  types  of  social  be- 
havior. Everything  which  we  call  ethics  or  mor- 
ality changes  into  well-defined  and  rigidly  deter- 
mined behavior.  There  is  nothing  more  "  spirit- 
ual "  about  it  than  there  is  in  the  fall  of  a  raindrop 
or  in  the  luminous  trail  of  a  meteor,  or  in  any  form 
of  what  has  happily  been  called  "  cosmic  weather." 
This  reduction  of  personality  to  a  center  of  ac- 
tivity is  a  reaction  from  the  dualistic  sundering 
of  mind  and  body  inherited  from  Descartes.  The 
theory  of  psycho-physical  parallelism  is  utterly 
bankrupt.  Idealism,  which  is  an  attempt  to  get 
round  the  impasse  of  dualism  by  treating  mind  as 
the  only  reality,  is  abhorrent  to  scientists  and  un- 
popular with  young  philosophers,  especially  in 
America.  Some  other  solution  is  therefore  ur- 
gent. The  easiest  one  at  hand,  though  it  is  ob- 
viously temporary  and  superficial,  is  to  cut  across 


164    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

the  mind  loop,  ignore  its  unique,  originative,  crea- 
tive capacity  and  its  interior  depth,  to  deal  only 
with  body  plus  body's  activities,  and  to  call  that 
"  psychology." 

The  "  mind-state  "  psychology  takes  us  little 
farther  on.  It  also  is  a  form  of  naturalism. 
"  Mind-state  "  psychology  makes  more  of  intro- 
spection than  behaviorist  psychology  does,  and  it 
works  more  than  the  latter  does  in  terms  of  con- 
sciousness, which  for  the  behaviorist  can  be  almost 
ignored  or  questioned  as  an  existing  reality.  Ac- 
cording to  this  view,  mind  or  consciousness  is 
composed  of  a  vast  number  of  "  elemental  units," 
and  the  business  of  psychology  is  to  analyze  and 
describe  these  units  or  states  and  to  discover  the 
laws  of  their  arrangement  or  succession.  Mind, 
on  this  theory,  is  an  aggregate  or  sum  total  of 
"  states."  Professor  James,  who  gives  great 
place  to  "  mind  states,"  will,  however,  not  admit 
that  they  are  permanent  and  repeatable  "  units," 
passing  and  returning  unaltered.  In  his  usual 
vivid  way  he  says  that  "  a  permanently  existing 
1  idea  '  [i.  e.,  mental  unit]  which  makes  its  ap- 
pearance before  the  footlights  of  consciousness  at 
periodical  intervals  is  as  mythological  an  entity 
as  the  Jack  of  Spades."  1    And  yet  he  continues 

1  Psychology  (Briefer  Course),  p.  197. 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE     165 

to  deal  with  mind  as  a  vast  series  of  more  or  less 
describable  states.  Some  states  are  "  substan- 
tive," such  as  our  "  perceptions,"  our  "  memo- 
ries," or  our  definite  "  images,"  when  the  mind 
perches  and  rests  upon  some  clear  and  describable 
thought,  and  on  the  other  hand  there  are  "  transi- 
tive states  "  which  are  vague,  hard  to  catch  or 
hold  or  express,  and  which  reveal  the  mind  in 
flight,  in  passage,  on  the  way  from  one  substan- 
tive state  to  another. 

When  we  ask  the  "  mind-state  "  psychologist 
to  tell  us  about  the  soul  or  to  supply  us  with  a 
working  substitute  for  it,  he  relegates  it  to  the 
scrap  heap  where  lie  the  collected  rubbish  and  the 
antiquated  mental  furniture  of  the  medieval  cen- 
turies. We  have  no  need  of  it.  It  is  only  a  word 
anyhow.  It  has  always  been  an  expensive  luxury 
and  a  continual  bother.  We  are  better  off  with 
it  gone.  When  we  look  about  for  a  "  self  as 
knower,"  or  for  a  guardian  of  our  identity,  we 
find  all  that  we  need  in  these  same  "  passing  states 
of  consciousness."  They  not  only  know  things 
and  facts,  but  they  also  know  themselves,  and  suc- 
cessively inherit  and  adapt  all  the  preceding 
"  states  "  have  gained  and  acquired.  The  state 
of  the  present  moment  owns  the  thoughts  and  ex- 
periences which  preceded  it,  for  "  what  possesses 


1 66    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

the  possessor  possesses  the  possessed."  "  In  our 
waking  hours,"  Professor  James  says,  "  though 
each  pulse  of  consciousness  dies  away  and  is  re- 
placed by  another,  yet  that  other,  among  the 
things  it  knows,  knows  its  own  predecessor  and 
finding  it  '  warm,'  greets  it  saying,  '  Thou  art 
mine  and  part  of  the  same  self  with  me.'  "  It 
seems,  then,  this  famous  writer  concludes,  that 
"  states  of  consciousness  are  all  that  psychology 
needs  to  do  her  work  with.  Metaphysics  or  the- 
ology may  prove  the  soul  to  exist;  but  for  psy- 
chology the  hypothesis  of  such  a  substantial  prin- 
ciple of  unity  is  superfluous."  1  We  are  certainly 
hard  up  if  we  must  depend  on  proofs  which  the- 
ology can  give  us! 

We  are  thus  once  more  reduced  to  a  condition 
of  sheer  naturalism.  Our  stream  of  conscious- 
ness is  only  a  rapid  succession  of  passing  states, 
each  "  state  "  causally  attached  to  a  molecular 
process  in  the  brain.  "  Every  psychosis  is  the 
result  of  a  neurosis"  There  is  no  soul,  there  is 
no  creative  spiritual  pilot  of  the  stream,  there  is 
no  freedom,  there  are  no  moral  values,  there  is 
nothing  but  passing  "  cosmic  weather,"  sometimes 
peeps  of  sunshine,  sometimes  moonshine,  some- 
times drizzle  or  blizzard,  and  sometimes  cyclone 

1  Ibid,  p.  203. 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE     167 

or  waterspout!  To  meet  the  appalling  thinness 
of  this  "  cinema  "  of  mind  states,  we  are  given 
the  comfort  of  believing  that  there  is  an  under- 
threshold  world  within,  possibly  more  real  and 
surely  more  important  than  this  little  rivulet  of 
states  which  make  up  our  conscious  life.  There 
is  a  "  fringe  "  to  consciousness  more  wonderful 
than  that  which  adorned  the  robe  of  the  high 
priest.  This  "  fringe  "  defies  description  and  baf- 
fles all  analysis.  It  is  a  halo  or  penumbra  which 
surrounds  every  "  state  "  and  holds  all  the  states 
vitally  together,  so  that  "  states  "  turn  out  to  be 
unsundered  in  some  deeper  mysterious  currents  of 
being.  Others  would  call  this  same  underlying, 
mysterious  part  of  us  the  subliminal  "  self,"  i.  e., 
under-threshold  "  self."  It  is  a  kind  of  semi- 
spiritual  matrix  where  the  states  of  consciousness 
are  formed  and  gestated.  It  is  the  source  to 
which  we  may  trace  everything  that  can  not  be 
explained  by  the  avenues  of  the  senses.  Demons 
and  divinities  knock  at  its  doors  and  visitants 
from  superterrestrial  shores  peep  in  at  its  win- 
dows. It  is  often  treated,  especially  of  course 
by  Frederic  Myers,  as  a  deeper  "  self,"  more  or 
less  discontinuous  with  our  conscious  upper  self, 
the  self  of  mind  states.  All  work  of  genius  is 
due   to    "  subliminal   uprushes,"    "  an    emergence 


168     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

into  the  current  of  ideas  which  the  man  is  con- 
sciously manipulating  of  other  ideas  which  he  has 
not  consciously  originated,  but  which  have  shaped 
themselves  beyond  his  will  in  profounder  regions 
of  his  being."  As  is  well  known,  Professor  James 
resorts  to  these  "  subliminal  uprushes  "  for  his 
explanation  of  all  the  deeper  religious  experiences 
and  he  has  done  much  to  give  credit  to  these 
"  profounder  regions  of  our  being  "  and  to  make 
the  subliminal  theory  popular.  He  does  not,  how- 
ever, as  Myers  does,  treat  it  as  another  "self," 
an  intermediary  between  earth  and  heaven,  a  mes- 
senger and  a  mediator  of  all  those  higher  and  di- 
viner aspects  of  life  which  transcend  the  sphere 
of  sense  and  of  the  empirical  world. 

II 

No  theory  certainly  is  sound  which  begins  by 
cutting  the  subconscious  and  the  conscious  life 
apart  into  two  more  or  less  dissociated  selves. 
There  is  every  indication  and  evidence  of  contin- 
uity and  correlation  between  what  is  above  and 
what  is  below  the  threshold  which  in  any  case  is 
as  relative  and  artificial  a  line  as  is  the  horizon. 
The  so-called  "  uprushes  "  of  the  genius  are  finely 
correlated  with  his  normal  experience  into  which 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE      169 

they  "  uprush."  The  "  uprushes  "  which  convey 
truth  to  Socrates  beautifully  fit,  first,  the  char- 
acter of  the  man  and,  secondly,  the  demands  of 
the  temporal  environment.  Dante's  "  uprushes  " 
correspond  to  the  psychological  climate  of  the 
medieval  world,  and  Shakespeare's  "  uprushes  " 
are  well  suited  to  the  later  period  of  the  Renais- 
sance. All  subliminal  communications  are  con- 
gruent and  consonant  with  the  experience  of  the 
person  who  receives  them.  The  visions  of  apoca- 
lyptic seers  are  all  couched  in  the  imagery  of  the 
apocalyptic  schools,  and  so,  too,  the  reports  of 
mediums  are  all  in  terms  of  spiritualistic  beliefs. 
We  shall  never  find  the  solution  of  our  religious 
problems  by  dividing  the  inner  life  of  man  into 
two  unrelated  selves,  by  whatever  name  we  call 
them,  for  any  religion  that  is  to  be  real  must  go 
all  the  way  through  us,  must  unify  all  our  powers, 
and  must  furnish  a  spring  and  power  by  which 
we  live  here  and  now  in  the  sphere  of  our  con- 
sciousness, our  character,  and  our  will. 

It  proves  to  be  just  as  impossible  to  cut  con- 
sciousness up  into  the  fragmentary  bits  or  units 
called  mind  states,  or  to  sunder  it  into  a  so-called 
11  self  as  knower  "  and  "  self  as  known."  Con- 
sciousness is  never  a  shower  of  shot  —  a  series 
of  discontinuous  units.    It  is  the  most  completely 


170    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

integral  unity  known  to  us  anywhere  in  the  uni- 
verse. There  are  no  "parts"  to  it;  it  is  with- 
out breaks  or  gaps.  It  is  one  undivided  whole. 
The  only  unit  we  can  properly  talk  about  is  our 
unique  persisting  personal  self  in  conscious  rela- 
tion to  an  environment.  We  can,  of  course,  treat 
consciousness  in  the  abstract  as  an  aggregate  of 
states  and  we  can  formulate  a  scientific  account 
of  this  constructed  entity  as  we  can  of  any  other 
abstracted  section  of  reality.  But  this  abstracted 
entity  is  forever  totally  different  from  the  warm 
and  intimate  inner  life  within  us,  as  we  actually 
live  it  and  feel  its  flow.  Any  state  or  process 
which  we  may  talk  about  is  only  an  artificial  frag- 
ment of  a  larger,  deeper  reality  which  gives  the 
"  fragment  "  its  peculiar  being  and  makes  it  what 
it  is.  Underneath  all  that  appears  and  happens 
in  the  conscious  flow  is  the  personal  self  for  whom 
the  appearances  occur.  Any  psychologist  who  ex- 
plicitly leaves  this  out  of  his  account  always  im- 
plicitly smuggles  it  in  again. 

The  most  striking  fact  of  experience  is  knowing 
that  we  know.  The  same  consciousness  which 
knows  any  given  object  in  the  same  pulse  of  con- 
sciousness knows  itself  as  knowing  it.  Self-con- 
sciousness is  present  in  all  consciousness  of  ob- 
jects.   The  thinker  that  thinks  is  involved  in  and 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE      171 

is  bound  up  with  all  knowledge,  even  of  the  sim- 
plest sort.  Every  idea,  every  feeling,  and  every 
act  of  will  is  what  it  is  because  it  is  in  living 
unity  with  our  entire  personal  self.  If  any  such 
"  state  "  got  dissociated,  slipped  away  and  under- 
took to  do  business  on  its  own  hook,  it  would  be 
as  unknown  to  us  as  our  guardian  angel  is.  The 
mind  that  knows  can  never  be  separated  from 
the  world  that  is  known.  One  can  think  in  ab- 
straction of  a  mind  apart  by  itself  and  of  a  world 
equally  isolated  —  but  no  such  mind  and  no  such 
wrorld  actually  exist.  To  be  a  real  mind,  a  real 
self,  is  to  be  in  active  commerce  with  a  real  world 
given  in  experience.  One  thinks  his  object  in 
the  same  unified  pulse  of  consciousness  in  which 
he  thinks  himself  and  vice  versa.  There  is  no 
self-consciousness  without  object-consciousness, 
and  there  is  no  object-consciousness  without  self- 
consciousness.  Outer  and  inner,  knower  and 
known,  are  not  two  but  forever  one.  The  "  soul," 
therefore,  is  not  something  hidden  away  in  behind 
or  above  and  beyond  our  ideas  and  feelings  and 
will  activities.  It  is  the  active  living  unity  of  per- 
sonal consciousness  —  the  one  psychic  integer 
and  unit  for  a  true  psychology.  It  binds  all  the 
items  of  experience  into  one  indivisible  unity,  one 
organic  whole  through  which  our  personal  type 


172     SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

of  life  is  made  possible.  At  every  moment  of 
waking,  intelligent  life  we  look  out  upon  each 
fact,  each  event,  each  experience  from  a  wider 
self  which  organizes  the  new  fact  in  with  its  for- 
mer experiences,  weaves  it  into  the  web  of  its 
memories  and  emotions  and  purposes,  makes  the 
new  fact  a  part  of  itself,  and  yet  at  the  same  time 
knows  itself  as  transcending  and  outliving  the 
momentary  fact. 

When  we  study  the  personal  self  deeply 
enough,  not  as  cut  up  into  artificial  units,  but  as 
the  living,  undivided  whole,  which  is  implied  in 
all  coherent  experience,  we  find  at  once  a  basis 
for  those  ideal  values  that  are  rightly  called  spir- 
itual and  for  "  those  mighty  hopes  that  make  us 
men."  The  first  step  toward  a  genuine  basis 
of  spiritual  life  is  to  be  found  in  the  restoration 
of  the  personal  self  to  its  true  place  as  the  ulti- 
mate fact,  or  datum,  of  self-conscious  experience. 
As  soon  as  we  come  back  to  this  central  reality, 
our  unified,  unique,  self-active  personality,  we  find 
ourselves  in  possession  of  material  enough;  as 
Browning  would  say, 

"  For  fifty  hopes  and  fears 
As  old  and  new  at  once  as  nature's  self, 
To  rap  and  knock  and  enter  in  our  soul, 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE      173 

Take  hands  and  dance  there,  a  fantastic  ring, 
Round  the  ancient  idol,  on  his  base  again, — 
The  grand  Perhaps!  " 


What  we  find  at  once,  even  without  a  resort  to 
a  subliminal  self,  or  to  "  uprushes,"  is  that  our 
normal,  personal  self-consciousness  is  a  unique, 
living,  self-active,  creative  center  of  energies, 
dealing  not  only  with  space  and  time  and  tangible 
things,  but  dealing  as  well  with  realities  which  are 
space-  and  time-transcending.  "  The  things 
that  are  not "  prove  to  be  immense  factors 
in  our  lives  and  constantly  "  bring  to  naught  the 
things  that  are."  The  greatest  events  of 
history  have  not  been  due  to  physical  forces; 
they  have  been  due  to  plans  and  ideals  which  were 
real  only  in  the  viewless  minds  of  men.  What 
teas  not  yet  brought  about  what  was  to  be.  Alex- 
ander the  Great  with  his  physical  forces,  sweeping 
across  the  ancient  world  like  a  cataclysm  of  na- 
ture, was  certainly  no  more  truly  a  world-builder 
than  was  Jesus,  who  had  no  armies,  who  used  no 
tangible  forces,  but  merely  put  into  operation 
those  "  things  that  were  not,"  i.  e.,  his  ideas  of 
what  ought  to  be  and  his  conviction  that  love  is 
stronger  than  Roman  legions.  The  simplest  and 
humblest    of    us,    like    the    Psalmist,    find    the 


174    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

Meshech  where  we  sojourn  too  straitened  and 
narrow  for  us.  We  have  all  cried,  "  Woe  is  me 
that  I  sojourn  in  Meshech!"  The  reason  that 
we  discover  the  limits  and  bounds  of  our  poor 
Meshech  is  that  we  are  all  the  time  going  beyond 
the  hampering  Meshech  that  tries  to  contain  and 
imprison  us. 

The  thing  which  spoils  all  our  finite  camping 
places  is  our  unstilled  consciousness  that  we  are 
made  for  something  more  than  we  have  yet  real- 
ized or  attained.  Our  ideals  are  an  unmistakable 
intimation  of  our  time-transcending  nature.  We 
can  no  more  stop  with  that  which  is  than  Niagara 
can  stop  at  the  fringe  of  the  fall.  All  conscious- 
ness of  the  higher  rational  type  is  continually  car- 
ried forward  toward  the  larger  whole  that  would 
complete  and  fulfill  its  present  experience.  We 
are  aware  of  the  limit  only  because  we  are  already 
beyond  it.  The  present  is  a  pledge  of  more;  the 
little  arc  which  we  have  gives  us  a  ground  of  faith 
in  the  full  circle  which  we  seek.  A  study  of  man's 
life  which  does  not  deal  with  this  inherent  idealiz- 
ing tendency  is  like  Hamlet  with  Hamlet  left  out. 
Martineau  declared: 

"  Amid  all  the  sickly  talk  about  '  ideals '  which  has 
become  the  commonplace  of  our  age,  it  is  well  to  remem- 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE     175 

ber  that  so  long  as  they  are  dreams  of  future  possibility 
and  not  faiths  in  present  realities,  so  long  as  they  are  a 
mere  self-painting  of  the  yearning  spirit  and  not  its  per- 
sonal surrender  to  immediate  communion  with  an  in- 
finite Perfection,  they  have  no  more  solidity  or  steadiness 
than  floating  air-bubbles,  gay  in  the  sunshine  and  broken 
by  the  passing  wind.  .  .  .  The  very  gate  of  entrance 
to  religion,  the  moment  of  its  new  birth,  is  the  discovery 
that  your  ideal  is  the  everlasting  Real,  no  transient  brush 
of  a  fancied  angel  wing,  but  the  abiding  presence  and 
persuasion  of  the  Soul  of  souls."  x 

In  the  same  vein  Pringle-Pattison,  one  of  the 
wisest  of  our  living  teachers,  has  said: 

"  Consciousness  of  imperfection,  the  capacity  for  prog- 
ress, and  the  pursuit  of  perfection,  are  alike  possible  to 
man  only  through  the  universal  life  of  thought  and  good- 
ness in  which  he  shares  and  which,  at  once  an  indwelling 
presence  and  an  unattainable  ideal,  draws  him  '  on 
and  always  on.'  "  2 

It  is  here  in  these  experiences  of  ours  which 
spring  out  of  our  real  nature,  but  which  always 
carry  us  beyond  what  is  and  which  make  it  im- 
possible for  us  to  live  in  a  world  composed  of 
"  things,"  no  matter  how  golden  they  are,  that 

1  Martineau,  A  Study  of  Religion  (2d  ed.),  I,  12. 

2  The  Philosophical  Radicals,  pp.  97-98. 


176    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

we  have  the  source  of  our  spiritual  values.  When 
we  talk  about  values  we  may  use  the  word  in  two 
senses.  In  the  ordinary  sense  we  mean  some- 
thing extrinsic,  utilitarian.  We  mean  that  we 
possess  something  which  can  be  exchanged  for 
something  else.  It  is  precious  because  we  can  sell 
it  or  swap  it  or  use  it  to  keep  life  going.  In  the 
other  sense  we  see  value  in  reference  to  some- 
thing which  ought  to  be,  whether  it  now  is  or  not. 
It  is  fit  to  be,  it  would  justify  its  being  in  relation 
to  the  whole  reality.  When  we  speak  of  ethical 
or  spiritual  values  we  are  thinking  of  something 
that  will  minister  to  the  highest  good  of  persons 
or  of  a  society  of  persons.  Value  in  this  loftier 
meaning  always  has  to  do  with  ideals.  A  being 
without  any  conscious  end  or  goal,  i.  e.,  without 
an  ideal,  would  have  no  sense  of  worth,  no  spir- 
itual values.  It  does  not  appear  on  the  level  of 
instinct.  It  arises  as  an  appreciation  of  what 
ought  to  be  realized  in  order  to  complete  and 
fulfill  any  life  which  is  to  be  called  good.  Ob- 
viously a  person  with  rich  and  complex  interests 
will  have  many  scales  of  value,  but  lower  and 
lesser  ones  will  fall  into  place  under  wider  and 
higher  ones,  so  that  one  forms  a  kind  of  hierarchi- 
cal system  of  values  with  some  overtopping  end  of 
supreme  worth  dominating  the  will. 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE     177 

It  becomes  one  of  the  deepest  questions  in  the 
world  what  connection   there   is  between   man's 
spiritual  values  or  ideals  and  the  eternal  nature  of 
things  in  the  universe.     Are  these  ideals  of  ours, 
these  values  which  seem  to  raise  us  from  the  natu- 
ralistic to  the  spiritual  level,  just  our  subjective 
creations,  or  are  they  expressions  of  a  cooperat- 
ing and  rational  power  beyond  us  and  yet  in  us, 
giving  us  intimations  of  what  is  true  and  best  in 
a  world  more  real  than  that  of  matter  and  mo- 
tion?   These  ideal  values,  such  as  our  apprecia- 
tion of  beauty,  our  confidence  in  truth,  our  dedi- 
cation to  moral  causes,  our  love  for  worthy  per- 
sons, our  loyalty  to  the  Kingdom  of  God,  are  not 
born  of  selfish  preference   or  individual  desire. 
They  are  not  capricious  like  dreams  and  visions. 
They  attach  to  something  deeper  than  our  per- 
sonal wishes,  in  fact  our  faith  in  them  and  our 
devotion  to  them  often  cause  us  to  take  lines  of 
action  straight  against  our  personal  wishes  and 
our  individual  desires.     They  stand  the  test  of 
stress  and  strain,  they  weather  the  storms  of  time 
which   submerge    most   things,    they    survive    all 
shock  and  mutations  and  only  increase  in  worth 
with  the  wastage  of  secondary  goods.    They  rest 
on  no  mere  temporary  impulse  or  sporadic  whim. 
They  have  their  roots  deep  in  the  life  of  the  race. 


178    SPIRITUAL  ENERGIES  IN  DAILY  LIFE 

They  have  lasted  better  than  Andes  or  Ararat, 
and  they  are  based  upon  common,  universal  as- 
pects of  rational  life.  They  are  at  least  as  sure 
and  prophetic  as  are  laws  of  triangles  and  rela- 
tions of  space.  If  we  can  count  on  the  perma- 
nence of  the  multiplication  table  and  on  the  con- 
tinuity of  nature,  no  less  can  we  count  on  the 
conservation  of  values  and  the  continued  signifi- 
cance of  life. 

They  seem  thus  to  belong  to  the  system  of  the 
universe  and  to  have  the  guardianship  of  some 
invisible  Pilot  of  the  cosmic  ship.  The  streams 
of  moral  power  and  the  spiritual  energies  that 
have  their  rise  in  good  persons  are  as  much  to 
be  respected  facts  of  the  universe  as  are  the  rivers 
that  carry  ships  of  commerce.  Moral  goodness  is 
a  factor  in  the  constitution  of  the  world,  and  the 
eternal  nature  of  the  universe  backs  it  as  surely 
as  it  backs  the  laws  of  hydrogen.  It  does  not 
back  every  ideal,  for  some  ideals  are  unfit  and  do 
not  minister  to  a  coherent  and  rationally  ordered 
scheme  of  life.  Those  ideals  only  have  the  august 
sanction  and  right  of  way  which  are  born  out  of 
the  age-long  spiritual  travail  of  the  race  and  which 
tend  to  organize  men  for  better  team  efforts,  i.  e., 
which  promote  the  social  community  life,  the  or- 
ganism of  the  Spirit.     Through  these   spiritual 


PSYCHOLOGY  AND  SPIRITUAL  LIFE      179 

forces,  revealed  in  normal  ethical  persons,  we  are, 
I  believe,  nearer  to  the  life  of  God  and  closer  to 
the  revealing  centers  of  the  universe  than  we  are 
when  we  turn  to  the  subliminal  selves  of  hysterics. 
The  normal  interior  life  of  man  is  boundless  and 
bottomless.  It  is  not  a  physical  reality,  to  be  meas- 
ured by  foot  rules  or  yardsticks.  It  is  a  reality 
of  a  wholly  different  order.  It  is  essentially  spir- 
itual, i.  e.,  of  spirit.  In  its  organized  and  differ- 
entiated life  this  personal  self  of  ours  is  often 
weak  and  erratic.  We  feel  the  urge  which  be- 
longs to  the  very  nature  of  spirit,  but  we  blunder 
in  our  direction,  we  bungle  our  aims  and  purposes, 
we  fail  to  discover  what  it  is  that  we  really  want. 
But  we  are  never  insulated  from  the  wider  spir- 
itual environment  which  constitutes  the  true  inner 
world  from  which  we  have  come  and  to  which  we 
belong.  There  are  many  ways  of  correspondence 
with  this  environment.  No  way,  however,  is  more 
vital,  more  life-giving  than  this  way  of  dedication 
to  the  advancement  of  the  moral  ideals  of  the 
world. 


"""   LOAN  DHPT. 

RenewedbQolffcf  r       ^^r-^ — -"tOTT 


S2S5-J»* 


T-r»9lA-60m-3,'65 
%2336sl0)476B 


U^^erkeley 


1V4-S-&1 


UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA  LIBRARY 


V 


■••*J*..-v 


hi  3» 


